Idée Fixe
by fourleggedfish
Summary: Sensory overload prompt on the kinkmeme with Watson and Mary both looking after Holmes in the aftermath. Full prompt inside. Hurt/comfort, character study, awkward sexual situations.


For a prompt on the kinkmeme that goes like this: _Watson: "Mary! Help me with him!" He's calling this to her as he comes into their home dragging or carrying Holmes, who can be injured, sick, or - and this is my preference - having some sort of sensory-overload, sleep-deprived, malnourished-for-four-days, migraine-stricken, panic attack meltdown. (You like that? That is the clinical term for it, too.) Mary and Watson fall into the instant rhythm of doing whatever needs to be done for their collapsed lover, because this is the worst of a pattern of incidents with Holmes; they've been down this road. Oh, and eventually, this culminates in smoking, possessive, three-way sex._ I'm not sure that I delivered on the "smoking" part, but mine is not to question why...

Additional warnings: implications of emotional infidelity and related angst.

**A/N** - This is part of my ongoing effort to finish all of my half-finished stories and get them posted. I started this a few years ago and never finished it because I wasn't happy with the scenario, or my characterizations, or the believability (yes...yes, I worry about the plausibility of my fanfictions *for shame*). I tried to polish it up the best I could, but if there are any rough bits or anything that seems OOC, I apologize. It's better than it was, but I'm still not entirely happy with it, and at some point, I have to call it done and stop tinkering. I think that during the writing process, I was trying to make it a hot and smutty threesome, but the story wanted to be a character study instead, and we fought each other the whole way. So...yeah. After that glowing recommendation... *smacks self upside the head* I will shut up now and let you enjoy the fic without any further author-angst or OCD-ness.

The original thread for the main prompt was here (http colon slash slash .com slash ?thread=4536634#t4536634), and I sort of abandoned it due to RL (which is a whiny little bitch). I hope that anyone who followed it before won't hate me too much for only just now finishing it. *cowers*

I am still working on all of my other stories, including "Distractions" and "How Not To Be Boring." I know that the long time between updates is annoying. I can only keep apologizing and promising that I have every intention of sticking with them.

* * *

"Mary!" Watson shouldered the door open and all but dragged Holmes into the foyer of his house in Kensington. "_Mary!_" He barely managed to kick the door shut again with his heel, both of his arms occupied with keeping Holmes on his feet. He wasn't sure what the contributing factors had been this time since he had only joined Holmes on the last leg of the case, but this most recent breakdown came as no surprise considering the chaos of Charring Cross station.

It had seemed a harmless prank at first, perpetrated by overzealous and unsupervised children, but the explosion of fireworks on the train platform had resulted in pandemonium, and the next thing Watson knew, a veritable riot had erupted as everyone in sight panicked and sought to flee. The holiday weekend ensured that more than the usual number of travelers were congesting the train station, and then more mercurial flashes had colluded with the screech of the train whistle, the preponderance of steam from the engine, the usual London sulfurous fog, and a stampede to leave Holmes clapping his hands over his ears, eyes squeezed shut against the sudden intensity of the sensory stimulation, trying ineffectually to flatten himself against the outer wall of a train car that was even then pulling out of the station. Watson had nearly lost him off the side of the platform, and he shuddered to think of his friend mangled against the rails.

Watson had somehow gotten Holmes out of there, both of them mostly unharmed, and then piled him into a cab three blocks away, which was how far they had to go to find one not already in service after the mass exodus from Charring Cross. And now, it was all Watson could do to remain standing in the entryway, his bad leg trembling under their combined weight, his arms shoved up under Holmes' and wrapped around his torso to crush the man against his chest. Holmes had yet to lower his hands from his ears, and if Watson had let him, he would have curled himself into a ball on the floor of the carriage, which would have made getting him back out of it difficult at best. Luckily, it had been enough this time for Watson to maintain his grip and for Holmes to burrow against him, his nose buried in Watson's cravat, and Watson's breath falling across the top of his head.

"Holmes. Holmes, it's alright." Watson cinched his arms tighter around Holmes' torso and let him sink to the floor. Holmes had gone rigid at the silence that followed the slamming of the front door, as if he could hear the tumult of his own mind all the better now for the lack of background noise. He held himself nearly as unpliant as the wall against which Watson propped him, a pill bug in fine English clothes, breathing syllables into the air, muffled by his posture and the way he had curled in on himself.

Watson couldn't make out any of the words, but he knew what they were nonetheless: an endless litany of the recollection of faces, smells, sounds, sights, the taste of the air – everything that Holmes had observed, imprinted in a blaze in his mind, a man with too tenacious a memory to ever forget what he sees. It was what made him such a brilliant detective. He could observe down to the smallest speck of mud on a trouser leg, and deduce. And that was the crux of the problem, for he could not stop himself from doing it. The last time this had happened, Holmes had mumbled for hours, reporting the exact movements of various random passersby, their histories, where they shopped, what they had last eaten and when, what they did for a living, their marital statuses, even whether or not the marriages were happy ones – so many people that it had taken him hours to sift them all through his mind and work them to pieces, render them mundane and transparent. There was little help for him when he got like this; all he could do was scramble to catch back up to the present, like an accountant buried under an avalanche of receipts, charged with sorting them all out to balance an old estate's unmanaged ledger.

Watson had deluded himself into thinking that these attacks would cease to overwhelm Holmes as long as Watson stayed near enough to him. It had taken him years to realize why Holmes loathed to leave their Baker Street apartments alone, why he had taken so quickly to reliance on Watson's companionship when by all accounts, Holmes was as reclusive and antisocial as they came.

The first time he had noticed Holmes' peculiar withdrawal, the helpless distraction that left a distant yet faintly bewildered expression on his face, they had been at the opera house, caught in the midst of the intermission crowds. The opera-goers that night had been of the higher classes, all attending that particular showing simply because Queen Victoria had been announced to attend. She had not, as it turned out, shown up, but as a result of the rumor, it had seemed to Watson that every titled gentleman within fifty miles of London had appeared with a lady adorning his arm, and every available surface of every female present had glittered with jewels of the highest quality.

Unfortunately, the high lighting of the main hall had set so many of these jewels to winking, and the patronage had been so lively and loud, that Holmes had stuttered to a stunned halt on the stairs, his eyes disturbingly blank, by all accounts too overwhelmed to function at all under his own volition. Watson had noticed, thank god, and come back for him, then dragged him stumbling into a dark corner of a sitting room away from the main thoroughfare, afraid at first that Holmes had suffered a fit of the brain. Once in the quiet shadows, however, Holmes had shaken himself, blinked at Watson, and turned incredibly sheepish over the whole affair. It took twenty minutes to badger the full explanation out of him, and then Watson had refused to let him stay for the second half of the show. They had come back the next night instead to see it again amidst a shrunken audience.

Watson had learned since then that these episodes seemed to strike only when Holmes was exhausting himself or failing to sleep properly, neglecting his health for the sake of his various obsessions, of which crime was the most potent. Hence, Watson's regrettable need to nag Holmes at all hours of the day to prevent him from working himself too far into a state to make him shut down. His tenacity and care had earned him the ironic, if not unkind, moniker of Mother Hen. When his efforts at prevention failed, as they often did, Watson simply stayed near. He knew when to draw Holmes back to the moment with discrete touches and sharp, pointed words, aware that in the midst of most assaults on his overactive senses, Holmes could somehow manage to at least narrow his focus on Watson. It had seemed a trifling thing to Watson back then, just one more of Holmes' eccentricities, another manner in which Watson looked after him as no one else seemed inclined to do. He had thought nothing of it, really; in the grand scheme of things, these episodes paled in comparison to the more tangible dangers to which Holmes exposed himself, both outside Baker Street and within the confines of his own rooms.

The truly crippling episodes had not started until after Watson married and moved out of their shared rooms at Baker street; he had not foreseen how serious Holmes' unique problem could be without someone there at all times to keep him grounded in the unadorned moment. Watson could hardly describe the panic he had felt the first time Lestrade had sent a frightened messenger to him, saying that Holmes had collapsed, insensate, in the middle of the street outside Scotland Yard headquarters, and was even then sitting on the floor of Lestrade's office, balled into the darkest corner of the room, mumbling to himself under his breath.

"Holmes. Holmes, look at me." Watson worked his hands in around Holmes' face and exerted enough force to drag his chin up off his chest. "We're at my house. I need you to open your eyes and focus on me." He knew that it would be of little use at this point; once Holmes hit this low, a simple sharp word or redirection of sight did nothing to draw him back to the present.

Mary emerged from the back of the house at that point, her hands wrapped in a towel; she must have been in the kitchen. "John, what - "

"Help me with him." Watson cringed at the frayed quality of his voice, a sure sign of how close Holmes' affliction could come to unraveling him. He needed more strength than this to deal with a man who suddenly seemed to have none. Watson knew that he did Holmes an injustice by interpreting this as a weakness, seeing as how a fierce strength of will was probably the only thing – plus, perhaps, the threat of boredom – that prevented Holmes from becoming a complete recluse to avoid the situations that led to this. Or worse yet, a mental patient. And it took strength as well to trust Watson with his secret, and to listen to Watsons' calm coaxings once his presence penetrated the shell of his damnably perfect recall.

Mary dropped the towel as soon as she realized what had happened. "Oh my goodness." She hurried across the entry way and laid her hand on Watson's shoulder, peering past him at the miserable plight of the world's only private consulting detective. "Tell me what to do."

"We reek of the train station," Watson said. He could still smell sulphur and the singe of fire crackers and magnesium on their clothes. That meant that Holmes could smell it too, but with an acuity near to that of a bloodhound. He was probably capable of estimating the relative location of each individual explosion and the load of chemicals in each cracker, just by inhaling the scent of his own waistcoat. "Help me get these off of him."

Mary, bless her sweet heart, didn't even question being ordered by her husband to help disrobe another man. They had gotten Holmes through these attacks before, though none of this exact nature, where even odor played a factor. Watson's fingers shook on Holmes' buttons, so Mary took over the task of pulling off his waistcoat while Watson snapped Holmes' braces and tossed them into the corner along with the rest of Holmes' clothes. Once they had him down to his small clothes - which carried only a trace of burnt magnesium, even in minute amounts too much for this situation - Watson rocked back on his heels and tore at his own garments. Mary's hands interspersed with his in this endeavor too, and then she left the two half-naked men on the floor of the foyer to cart off their clothes. The unmistakable stench of sulphur lingered in her wake, set above Watson's quick breaths and Holmes' near-inaudible catalogue of whispered observations.

Watson shivered at the chill of the wood floor beneath him, ignoring the twinge of his overworked right leg. "Holmes." He crawled back across the floor until he could peel Holmes away from the wall and fold around him, arresting the disturbing back and forth motion with which Holmes had begun to rock himself. In vain, Watson scoured his mind for something mundane to talk about, but he could come up with nothing. Not that Holmes would participate in a conversation, but on occasion, hearing Watson's voice drone on in his ear for some minutes helped to calm the vehemence of his recitations, to snag just enough of Holmes' attention to break the cycle of involuntary perception.

In the silence, Holmes squirmed slightly in discomfort of some sort, and then his voice broke free from the desperately hushed whispers. "...widow, aged between sixty and sixty five, husband passed no more than four months since, ceased to wear wedding ring twelve to fifteen days ago, entertained a younger gentleman while in London, stub from the hotel indicates use of a bellhop while shopping, color and thickness of paper, coupled with quality of ink and font of the stamp points to the Grande, consumed two biscuits for breakfast with honey, one of which was fed to her by the younger man, who smokes Pall Mall, no fewer than twelve fags a day. Two children, one of four years, a girl, and a young man of fifteen, maybe sixteen, at the Cornish coast, north, boots hanging out of the young man's bag retained clumps of sand in the treads of the soles, shape and grit consistent with the rocky beaches of..."

Watson sighed and shaped Holmes into a firmer ball against the concavity of his chest. "I wish your gift were not such a backwards curse." He punctuated this resigned sentiment by pressing his lips to Holmes' hair. It wasn't something that Watson thought about, nor any sort of action he would normally take, and certainly not toward Holmes. But it seemed natural in that moment to display some sign of affection, and anyhow, Holmes was too distracted to notice any further outside stimuli.

Mary bustled about somewhere in the farther reaches of the house, and Watson stayed put, waiting for her to come back so that they could get Holmes off the floor - perhaps even into a bath to wash the charred smell from his skin and hair. Watson would not normally ask Mary to assist in something so nearly indecent, doctor husband or not, except that Watson knew very well that his strength would not hold out long enough, not after straining his bad leg and shoulder in the effort of getting Holmes here. He thanked god that Mary had softened toward Holmes in the past year, and that Holmes in turn had learned to reign in his natural hostility. Honestly, Watson had figured that all Holmes had needed was time to adjust to the upheaval in his daily life, and sure enough, relations had smoothed over quite well. Even Holmes' jealousy had bled off once he had realized that Mary would no more monopolize Watson's time in marriage than she had while courting.

Of course, in hindsight, Watson reflected that a great deal of Holmes' aversion to losing him probably had to do with just this affliction. Watson wondered abstractly if these attacks had ever reached this severity before they had met, and if so, who had drawn him out of them back then. It was clear that Holmes feared falling prey to them. His initial reluctance to speak of it at the opera house so many years ago attested to how he loathed them, and how embarrassed he became on account of them. Having Watson around for seven years to act as a buffer had probably struck Holmes as an unexpected relief.

"Here," Mary called from the hallway. She hurried back into sight with a blanket trailing from her arms - the one from their marriage bed. At Watson's twitchy eyebrow, she offered a sheepish smile and confessed, "It smells of us both, but more of you, I think."

Watson eyed the blanket, and then declared with utter sincerity, "Mary, you are the most perceptive wife a man could ever ask for."

"So you often say," she replied coyly. Her eyes dimmed a moment later as concern replaced the easy mirth of their exchange. "Move your arms so that I can get it around him."

Simply because a shade of awkwardness warranted it, Watson said, "I admit, this is probably exceedingly strange."

Mary frowned as she worked the thick fabric around Holmes' curled body. "What is?"

Holmes continued to softly list off his unwanted deductions as Watson spoke over him. "That you should be married to a man whose best friend still steals his clothes just to revel in the scent of them."

"They calm him," Mary replied tersely. "Mister Holmes is often rude and has no sense of decorum or boundaries, or even politeness, but he has never behaved in an unseemly way toward either of us. In fact, by his standards, I have no doubt that he is never as kind to anyone as he is to us - to you. You know as well as I do that without his anonymous sponsorship of your practice, we would be dangerously in debt right now due to your penchant for treating those sorts of unfortunates who don't have the means to pay for your services. If all he asks in return is to borrow the scent of you to focus on to avert this sort of collapse, then who am I to grudge it to him?"

Watson threw her a sharp look and covered Holmes one exposed ear himself, the other already being pressed to Watson's collarbone, and hissed, "We aren't supposed know that he's the benefactor! He'd be mortified to be caught out doing something kind."

"Kind? No, habitual - which is perhaps the same thing."

"What are you - "

Primly, Mary interrupted with a sternly whispered, "John. I know full well that the funds he sneaks into our bank account are only what you would have won if you had made your customary bet at the ring. I also know full well that on the nights you would have lost money, Mister Holmes simply lets it pass. Do not presume to assure me otherwise." Mary shot him a rebellious look but said no more of it.

Suitably chagrined, Watson looked down at Holmes. He recalled with a tiny smile that Holmes had once warned him of Mary's shrewdness. Holmes' muttering had decreased in volume, and since Mary was even lending a comforting woman's touch - combing tentative fingers through Holmes hair - Watson saw no harm in shifting a hand down to inscribe circles between Holmes' shoulder blades. Holmes' eyes blinked open at that, though they were too wide and glittered as if with a fever, and his pupils seemed huge, unfocused, beneath the shadow of his brow.

Watson craned his neck to get his face within Holmes' periphery and smiled in that obscure way that only men with a mustache could pull off. "Hello there, old boy."

"...carried no fewer than three coins in his pocket, likely a shilling, a half crown and three pence to judge by the variety and depth of scoring across the face of the pocket watch..."

Watson tugged an edge of the blanket free and wrapped it around his forearm, covering his hand in the process, then pressed it gently over Holmes' mouth, enough to muffle his words but not prevent them. On Holmes' next inhale, he drew in the full scent of the blanket, of Watson mingled with hints of Mary, and his litany faltered.

Mary reached out to tuck a few wild tufts of Holmes' hair back behind his ear, and Holmes shied back against Watson. Stifled by the blanket, Holmes nonetheless intoned, "Charcoal, magnesium sulfate, strontium, copper to produce a bright purple color - " Holmes stopped abruptly and drew a shuddering breath, then shut his eyes against the dim light of the gas-lit foyer. His breath saturated Watson's palm through the blanket as he announced, "Watson."

Watson lowered his hand and instead used the blanket to cup Holmes' cheek and turn his face back toward him. "That's right, old boy. Do you know where you are?"

A breathy, pitiful groan answered that, and Holmes ducked his face down into the blankets, his arms rustling about in the cocoon of quilted fabric in a half-hearted bid for freedom. "Am I hung over?"

"In a manner of speaking," Watson replied. He kept his voice pitched low and soft, suspecting that the confluence of events, plus lack of proper eating or sleep, had conspired to give Holmes a massive headache. "How do you feel?"

Holmes hesitated, started to shake his head, and then abruptly stated, "It was sixpence. Sixpence in his pocket. The gold content of the pocket watch was unusually high for a man of his station - the absence of greenish stains on his thumb where he habitually depressed the latch suggests an alloy with very little copper in it. This explains how mere coins could gouge so deeply. I have to adjust my earlier deduction of his coinage to account for the softness of the metal. Incidentally, I suspect that the watch was stolen from a close acquaintance rather than borrowed or inherited - it is of far too high a quality for him to have purchased it himself, even from a pawnbroker. I lean toward stolen because his affect suggests a certain wariness..."

Watson suppressed a sigh and merely adjusted Holmes in his arms. Holmes, for his part, let him, and continued his discourse on the theft of a pocket watch by a man they would likely never see again. Instead of making a further effort to coax Holmes into conversation, Watson looked up at Mary. "I have no right to ask this of my own wife - "

Mary cut him off with an upraised hand. "Tell me what you need done."

"Ether from my examination room. And then...Mary, I really do apologize - "

"My dear John - stop it. Just tell me what's to be done."

Watson pressed his lips together beneath his mustache, where she would not see the expression, and then told her, "I think it best that the smell be gone by the time he wakes up."

Mary blinked at him a few times, then glanced at Holmes' averted face as if to make certain that he was still occupied within himself. When she looked back at Watson, her features betrayed a hint of scandal, but her kindness and regard tempered it. "You want help bathing him?"

It pained Watson to have her involved in this, to where her good nature should preclude the decent sensibilities of a lady, whether she was born to that station or not. "I would do it myself - god knows I've had to in the past when he's injured himself or rendered his senses feeble with his habits, but I fear that after the harrowing experience of just getting him here, there is no way my leg could stand up to lifting - "

"John, for heaven's sake, say no more of it." Mary wrapped her thin fingers around the back of Watson's neck, her thumb brushing his jaw. "I know you would not ask such a thing if you did not believe it necessary. And further, I know very well that you would never ask out of depravity. I will help you with him, John. Your friendship to him extends to me."

Watson nodded, and wondered yet again how he could be so fortunate to have found such a creature willing to be his. "If you could retrieve the ether, then. I will wait here."

Mary disappeared into his examination room, and Watson took the moment of relative privacy to adjust his grip on Holmes, hugging him closer with near brutal force as he folded over Holmes' uncharacteristically small shape as if to shelter him from his own wayward mind. "I am so sorry, old chap. I hope you can forgive the coming indignity."

Holmes wheezed as Watson compressed his diaphragm enough to restrict his breathing. To Watson's undying gratitude, the monotone dissertation on all of the strangers they had seen on the platform came to an abrupt end. Holmes fell perfectly silent in Watson's arms, more pliant than he had yet been.

Watson lifted his head to regard Holmes' profiled face, hoping that he had come out of the fit on his own, but Holmes had merely withdrawn further, his eyes sightless and unmoving against the slackened lines of his normally expressive if stoic face, eyelids half lowered in what should have been a languid manner. Holmes' ribcage expanded and contracted within the tight circle of Watson's arms, his breath shallow and rapid, and his exposed skin, normally cool, took on a disturbing chill, brought to further notice by the faint shivering that had wracked him since Watson had pulled him from Charring Cross.

"Oh, Holmes..." Watson shut his eyes for a moment and pressed his face against the side of Holmes' neck. It was a gesture beyond brotherly affection or friendship, but he needed that much. This was worse than the cocaine, worse than seeing Holmes rage with fever or unconscious due to morphine while Watson tended various hurts. Seeing such an animated man fall to this level of stillness caused an ache to spread through Watson's chest. "Don't get lost in there. I fear that one of these days you might, and that I won't be able to – "

Watson forced himself to stop, not because he feared to say something sentimental enough to earn Holmes' ridicule or derision, but because he heard Mary's footsteps returning from the depths of his practice rooms. He had no reason to find fault with Mary - he loved her, he truly did - but he could not prevent the thought from striking him that he had done wrong to marry her. It came to him often, that he missed Baker Street and would have preferred to remain there, but only at times like these did he allow the realization to linger in his mind. Mary could have done well in her life either with or without him; Holmes could not.

By the time Mary reappeared, Watson had schooled his features back to those of properly concerned friend, and he offered Mary a grateful smile for her endlessly generous nature. She must have known at times that her husband had regrets at the life he had chosen with her, but she never demanded that he give voice to them. Perhaps some part of her understood that Holmes occupied a significant portion of his heart, and in her grace, she allowed it. She had a great enough nature to share her husband's regard.

Mary set the medical supplies aside when she caught sight of them again, and knelt next to Watson. "John, he has not lost you." At Watson's blink of surprise, she smiled kindly. "Yes, it shows. Do not think I would ever ask you to leave him, not like that."

"Mary..." Watson averted his gaze and found it resting on Holmes, on the unruly mess of curls at the crown of his head. "Can we not speak of such things?"

"If you prefer." Mary frowned and followed the line of Watson's sight. "Has he fallen asleep of his own accord?"

"No," Watson replied roughly.

Mary nodded and leaned to her left to peer at Holmes' unblinking eyes for herself. Her mouth crumpled in sympathy. Too low for her to have meant Watson to hear, she breathed, "Why visit such an injustice on such a man?"

Watson swallowed hard and nodded at the ether bottle and cloth that Mary had set on the floor. "That may yet prove unnecessary. If you would?" Watson shifted Holmes in a bundle of pliant limbs and pushed him into Mary's arms so that he could pull himself unhindered to his feet.

On his way upright, Watson failed to account enough for his old leg wound. A hiss chattered out between his teeth and then his right knee impacted the floor harder than expected when his leg failed to hold his weight. Only barely did Watson manage not to swear out loud, but he thought every expletive in a retired soldier's arsenal, both hands going to cover the old scar just above his kneecap, his head bowed. A single grunt escaped him, and nothing more.

Mary reached out as if to stop his fall, but her hand ended up fluttering uselessly in the air between them. She knew better than to offer help before he had asked for it; it was a matter of pride. "John?"

"Fine," Watson bit out. "Just…a moment, if you would. I'm afraid I've been sorely tried today."

When Watson glanced up, he found Holmes' eyes fixed on him, tired about the corners and yet unmistakably clear. "Watson." His voice sounded rough from disuse even though a mere handful of hours had passed since the fiasco at the train station; he sounded all the more affectionate for it, a rare occurrence in someone normally so reserved, as far as the softer emotions went. "My dear boy, you've harmed yourself." He seemed surprised, and guilty, as if he knew that his own incapacitation had caused Watson to forgo his usual caution concerning his old injuries.

Watson only blinked at first, taken aback by the open concern in Holmes' attitude, in the tentative way he laid the pads of his fingers, stained from chemical experiments, over the backs of Watson's hands, touching where Mary had never been welcome to go. Watson saw a flash almost of resentment cross Mary's face, prompted by the recognition that Holmes was allowed certain liberties that she was not. It was gone a second later, and Watson wondered if he had seen it at all. "I'm alright, Holmes," Watson replied, his voice unsteady in spite of his assertion. "Are you?"

Holmes' awareness faltered for a moment, and then he shrugged, feigning his normal aloofness. He was clearly not quite returned to the moment, seeing as he had not yet noticed that it was in Mary's arms that he reclined. "Exhausted, I think. And my skull is pounding."

Watson nodded and rocked back on his heels, preparatory to standing once again, this time with more care. "I'm not surprised. The amount of energy that the body expends when divorced from the moment is quite high, actually. I know that you are loath to admit it, but when you go off like that, it's in an excited emotional state."

Holmes quirked an eyebrow, his face clouding over just enough for Watson to notice, and worry. "That seems quite counter-intuitive."

"Indeed it does, Holmes." Watson glanced down, his face schooled into a mask, and then braced himself internally as he once again pushed himself to his feet, this time with his weight skewed far to the left. Holmes' hand, having slipped from Watson's hovered near Watson's knee as if he wanted to touch the puckered skin that concealed the fragments of a bullet that the army surgeons had been unable to remove. Rather more sharply than was warranted, Watson snapped, "Holmes."

Holmes drew back immediately, taking the warning for what it was, and folded his hands back into the blanket, his body slumped back against Mary's. Uncharacteristically, contrite, he mumbled, "Sorry, old boy."

"Don't be." Watson gave Mary a weak smile, which she softened at even if she did not return it, and then extended a hand down to help Holmes up off the floor. Between him and Mary, they got Holmes upright even though he swayed a bit on his feet. "Come on, Holmes. Mary, would you kindly draw up a hot bath?"

"Of course," Mary demurred. She cast them both a curious look, something dark and yet not brooding. It was almost an appraisal. "I'll leave you two to make your way upstairs."

Watson peered after his wife as she moved easily down the hall and out of sight up the stairs, then glanced aside to find Holmes doing the same, his expression calculating and a little confused. "Holmes?"

Holmes shook himself and cast a sidelong glance at Watson. "Your…wife. She is an enigma."

"How so?" Watson prodded Holmes in one shoulder to propel him into motion, following a step behind.

"I had sincerely thought that she had no great liking for me." Holmes reached the stairs and grasped the railing, though not quickly enough to hide the fine tremble of his hand.

Watson imagined that if he were to check, he would find that Holmes continued to shiver as he had the whole way here from Charring Cross, though with exhaustion now rather than with the peculiar excitation of a besieged mind. "I believe that she simply needed time enough to get past your exterior before she could find the same fondness that I have for you."

Holmes made a face at Watson and heaved himself up the first stair. "Really, Watson. Must you?"

Watson smirked under his mustache. "Forgive me, Holmes. Your aversion to sentimentality slipped my mind." He grasped the railing on his side of the staircase but hesitated to make the first step; he could feel his features pull down in a frown at the effort required to drag himself to the next floor.

"Watson…" Holmes paused above him and concentrated on the stair in beneath his feet. "You know that…that I return the sentiment, right? I don't have to tell you…?"

Watson tipped his head to the side as if to regard Holmes from a new angle. Or to regard his back, anyway, which the blanket shrouded into a lump of bunched fabric. "Of course I know," he replied softly. "I may forget sometimes, but I do know."

Holmes nodded, just one curt downward motion, and clipped out, "Good. Well." He affirmed that to himself again, and then glanced over his shoulder. His brow crinkled before he backed down the steps to Watson's level. After stealing a covert glance at Watson, perhaps to gauge his probable reaction, Holmes slipped his left arm around Watson's waist, blanket and all. By way of excuse, Holmes remarked, "I have tried your patience today."

For a moment, Watson stiffened, and he felt Holmes do the same in apprehension that he had committed an error, but there was no pity in Holmes' lidded gaze when their eyes briefly met. Watson nodded back and leaned as much weight as he dared on Holmes' shoulder. "Indeed you have, but I can hardly fault you. That scene at the station was dreadful."

"Do you know, I can hardly recall it now?" Holmes pulled Watson up a step without a hint that they were doing something out of the ordinary. "How curious."

Watson grimaced as Holmes helped him up another step. His voice sounded pinched to his own ears when he finally confessed, "You worry me, Holmes."

"I know." Holmes said it without a hint of apology, but since Watson had not meant to reproach him by his admission, he let the haughtiness pass. "You should learn to look after yourself too, you know."

"Do not start," Watson snapped. "I do not use myself up nearly half as – "

"Mary may not realize that you've been gambling again, but I have."

Watson froze for a moment, the pulled away abruptly enough that Holmes grabbed for the railing to keep from losing his balance. "Of course you would notice."

"Now really, old chap. Just because I observed the signs – "

"Stop it, Holmes. I will not have this conversation with you."

"As you wish." Holmes let Watson get three steps up on his own, then latched his arm around him again, ignoring Watson's half-hearted, indignant protest. "Shut up, you old goat. I won't have you collapsing on the stairs. What would Mary think of my mistreating her adoring husband? I should lose what tenuous regard she has cultivated for the man who habitually steals you away from her."

Watson reluctantly smiled, but sidelong where Holmes wouldn't see it. "Indeed. As you say, a woman's regard is quite fickle."

"And here I had thought that my lessons were lost on you."

"Oh, come off it, Holmes."

Holmes snorted softly and heaved Watson up the last step before letting him go, though his hand lingered until he could be sure that Watson had his balance. "You will ruin yourself, you know."

Watson froze in place, one hand braced against the wall for balance. He couldn't look at Holmes, not after hearing that soft, understated concern in Holmes' voice. "I could say the same to you."

"But you didn't."

"I can look after myself, Holmes."

"I never meant to imply otherwise."

"But you did."

"But I did."

Watson's eyes flickered up and to the side, grazing but not resting on Holmes' profile. Then he cast aside the strangely intimate feel to the air and scoffed, "Why do you care, Holmes? I'm married; you aren't out half the rent money if I lay a foolish bet."

Holmes inhaled deeply, as if he intended to deliver a long-winded retort, but he apparently thought better of it. Watson watched him deflate, bringing his shoulders down in the process. "Of course. I had forgotten."

He had forgotten nothing, and Watson continued to study him on the sly for a few heartbeats, the silence fragile with unspoken things. "Holmes? What's going on? With you, I mean. You have been acting strangely, and it's not just the fits you suffer. Something has been wrong for some time now. Every time I see you, you seem less like yourself."

Holmes' eyes wandered to Watson's, skewed sideways in his head, and then he pursed his lips in irritation as he looked away down the opposite hallway. "I carry on whole conversations with you, you know. I tell you about my cases, about a dream I had, about my next chemical experiment. Sometimes it takes me whole minutes to remember that you are not silent because you're listening, but because you are not there, in your basket chair next to the fire. You left one of your awful yellowbacks on the table near the hearth and I slept with it for a week after you moved out. Or…laid with it, anyway, and pretended to sleep. I know we only ever shared a bed out of convenience and a lack of funds to purchase another, but I cannot seem to sleep at all anymore; it is too quiet next to me. I am fairly certain that Mrs. Hudson is planning to beat me with my own violin just to shut me up."

Watson smiled in spite of himself to hear the hint of light humor creep into Holmes' narrative at that point, but it didn't last. He grew uneasy to hear of these things. Holmes did not disclose matters of a personal nature, and he certainly did not admit to the sort of feeling inherent in listing out all of the habits that he could not break now that Watson was gone from Baker Street. "It's only been six months, Holmes. You'll find your stride soon."

"I know. That is what bothers me."

Watson started. For a moment, he had been certain that what he had _heard _was, 'That is what _frightens_ me.' Down the hall, Mary appeared in the bathroom doorway, and Watson could tell that she had been listening this whole time just by the look she exchanged with him. He imagined her realizing exactly why Holmes had been such a bear to her when she and Watson had started courting, and like any sensible woman, the implication shocked her. Nothing indecent had ever passed between them in the privacy of Baker Street, and yet the sentiment alone that Holmes seemed to be expressing was indecent.

It seemed inconceivable that Holmes had not noticed her there, but he went on speaking in the lowest sort of voice as if, indeed, he had not. Another habit, perhaps? When he had used to speak honestly with Watson, there had never been someone else near enough to overhear. "I wait for you to grab the morocco case straight from my hand and call me an idiot, tell me what a fool I'm being and drag me out for a walk instead." Holmes' eyes found Watson's feet and Watson parted his lips in mute horror at this new monologue. "But you don't anymore. I used to think twice about it. I don't like that look you get when you catch me at it. It used to be enough to stop me sometimes, but it isn't there anymore."

Watson breathed, "Holmes. For god's sake."

A sickly smile passed over Holmes' lips, and then he started as if he had just realized that his innermost thoughts and confessions had actually passed his lips. "I, um. I should probably go." His eyes scanned the hallway, and Watson could actually see him trying to remember how he had gotten to be half naked in Watson's hallway when his last clear memories were probably of disembarking at Charring Cross Station. He noticed Mary, colored faintly as he pulled the blanket back up over his shoulders, and then stammered, "If…I need my clothes…"

Watson just stood there, frozen, watching Holmes fidget in place and turn various shades of ill-eased and ashamed.

"Nonsense," Mary snapped. Both men jumped as she emerged fully from the bathroom and strode down the hallway. "Mister Holmes, honestly; you cannot leave tonight. I've never seen my John so upset as when he dragged you through our door. Oh, and goodness – look at you." She fussed with the folds of the blanket until Holmes cinched it tighter around himself and danced back out of reach. "Still shivering." She sighed as an exasperated mother might. "I should hate myself for sending you out in the cold in this state."

Holmes shook his head and colored deeper at being reminded of his incapacitation. "I assure you, madam, I am quite – "

"You will stay the night with us," Mary stated with finality. "Or else, I should be distressed all night, thinking of you wandering about the streets at this unseemly hour and wondering if you've managed to safely find your way home."

Holmes bristled faintly, but Watson could tell how disconcerted Mary's sudden solicitous behavior had left him. "I am perfectly capable of finding my own way – "

"You can borrow a set of my husband's nightclothes."

" – there are plenty of cabs at this hour. It's not even late – "

"Why, you'll even be within snoring distance. John is dreadfully loud, isn't he?"

Watson exclaimed, "Mary!"

Holmes snorted. "Yes, he is." But his wariness returned a second later, and he seemed angry at having let her make him laugh. "I am sure you're very kind Miss Morst – um, Missus Watson." He appeared as if giving Mary her new surname left a bad taste in his mouth, but glossed over it too soon for Watson to be certain of that. "And I thank you, but I hardly need coddling – "

Mary interjected, "What you need is a bath and a good meal, which I will be happy to fix. We have some cold meats down in the pantry."

Holmes set his jaw and stared past her shoulder at the wall. "I am not hungry."

"A sandwich it is then," Mary chirped. She clapped her hands in delight, and Watson merely stared at her. Holmes, for his part, surreptitiously shifted his feet so as to put an additional six inches between them. "You boys go wash up, and I'll lay out a platter in the study. Tea as well."

Mary practically skipped past them and down the stairs, and Watson watched her go with a bemused air. Beside him, Holmes eyed the now empty staircase as if Mary might reappear with an air rifle to take pot shots at the landing.

A few moments passed, and then Holmes turned his gaze on Watson. "I do believe that your wife is plagued by some sort of nervous disorder."

Watson glanced at him in turn. "Hardly."

"Mm." Holmes glowered darkly at the stairs, both of them listening to a patter of movement in the kitchen below. "She won't let me leave until dawn, will she."

"Mary has ways about her," Watson replied cryptically. "I think that in this case, it's best to simply do as she says."

Holmes didn't respond other than to suck on his bottom lip for a moment. Then he grunted noncommittally and gazed blankly at the floor.

"Holmes?"

"Your maid is quite clumsy." Holmes flicked a few fingers at the base boards near his feet. "She has scored the wood with the edge of the broom at least six times in the past month. Either she is uncoordinated, or she allows herself to be easily distracted. If it's the former, then perhaps she suffers a medical ailment of some sort? I could not see you keeping her on if she were merely inattentive. A palsy, perhaps."

Watson's eyebrows fell into a furrowed groove. "Holmes."

"And this quilt," Holmes went on spastically. He lifted overly avid eyes to Watson and stretched a length of quilt between his hands, oblivious to the fact that the rest of it fell from his shoulders to pool in the crooks of his elbows. "Look, Watson. There are three hundred and twenty seven cross stitches on this square, while all of the others I have examined thus far boast three hundred and twenty eight in each iteration of the repeating pattern. See here where one was missed – "

Alarmed now, Watson snapped, "Holmes!"

Holmes twitched at the volume of Watson's voice and fell silent again, head bowing ever so gradually to let his eyes wander sightlessly to where he worried the soft quilt between his restless hands.

When Watson stepped forward into Holmes' lowered line of sight, the only recognition he received was a slight crinkling of Holmes' features. To regain his full attention, Watson grasped both of his wrists and then pulled Holmes even closer when Holmes cringed and sought to wrench his hands free. "Holmes, look at me."

Holmes' mouth moved soundlessly for a moment, perhaps forming loose words, perhaps not, and then he suddenly raised his eyes, which had grown slightly wider than normal. "Yes, Watson?"

"Stay with me, man." Watson shook Holmes by the wrists which, because of the tense set of Holmes' arms, jerked his entire body.

Holmes grunted and shied, eyes closing as if in pain. "Right," he croaked too quickly. "Sorry, old boy." He swallowed thickly and then opened his eyes only to let his gaze wander at random. "Watson, I think...I'm not well."

Watson nodded and loosened the vice grip he had on Holmes' wrists. He didn't entirely let go, however. "Head still hurt?"

"Pounding," Holmes whispered back. "Did I strike my head at the station? I can see…glittering." He inscribed a vague circle that seemed to correspond the edges of his vision. "Shimmers."

"You have a migraine, Holmes; not a concussion. You need to have your bath and then eat something, just as Mary suggested. And after that, you will lie down in the guest room, and if you cannot fall asleep on your own, I will give you something to make you sleep. Do you understand?"

Holmes made a valiant attempt to act affronted at being ordered about like a child, but all he really managed to pull off was something like petulance. "No need to get pushy, Corporal."

Watson pursed his lips, mustache twitching, unamused. "Do not start with me, Holmes. I am your doctor, and for once in your life, you _will_ listen to me."

Apparently, dissent cost too much in the way of energy, because Holmes shrugged rather than continue his lame attempt at an argument.

Watson nodded once and then gestured toward the bathroom at the end of the hallway. "After you."

Holmes' gaze strafed Watson before he turned to peer down the hallway, reluctant to go any further. It took Watson a few moments to realize that Holmes had never been up here. He had visited Watson a few times, but had never gone beyond the sitting room or Watson's practice room. It seemed to Watson that Holmes might refuse to go any further into the private domain of Watson's married life, and Watson honestly wasn't sure that he would be able to insist that Holmes do so. It seemed cruel, suddenly, to have brought Holmes up here – to rub the marriage in his face, to further drive home the fact that Watson had, here, something indescribable that Holmes could never be a part of. Something happy and simple and domestic, a form of stability that in reality, Holmes was probably in desperate need of. Something to combat the sort of collapse he had suffered today. Something calm to welcome him home.

Watson glanced down and wondered at himself, entertaining these notions. His friend needed the help of both doctor and friend; there was nothing more to it. Surely Holmes would not dream of romanticizing the simple favor of a bath in such a ridiculous fashion. Why should Watson do so then? "Come, Holmes. Mary will have our meal ready shortly; we shouldn't make her keep it."

Holmes glanced over his shoulder without actually going to the trouble of looking at Watson, a strange frown on his face. It struck Watson again that it was cruel to force him on, but the moment broke when Holmes squared his shoulders and stalked down the hallway to the bathroom. Watson lingered behind for a moment, puzzled by his own melancholy and the odd feeling that brewed up in him as Holmes walked away. It felt akin to a faint longing, but surely he read himself incorrectly; there was simply no better word for the complex brew within him.

Holmes palmed the washroom door open and then stuck his head around the jamb without entering. Watson watched him twitch as if stopping himself from drawing back, and then his nose crinkled. "Watson, what on earth has Miss Morstan done to your washroom?"

For once, Watson didn't bother correcting Holmes about his wife's address; there was no point, as Holmes would continue calling Mary by whatever title he chose, no matter the legitimacy of their marriage. "Really, Holmes. In all of your numerous travels, have you never encountered potpourri?"

With a droll look to Watson, Holmes cleared his throat and hastily drew back into the hall. "I am indeed familiar with potpourri, Watson. And_ that_ is not potpourri. It is horrible; you never would have allowed such a stench in our washroom at Baker street. What is wrong with the simple scents of Turkish soap, cedar and jasmine, and lime pomade?"

Watson started to retort, then forcibly bit his tongue for two reasons. The first was that Holmes had just listed Watson's preferred types of soap, cologne and pomade, and the intimacy of commenting on such a thing – the intimation that Holmes missed it and would recognize it anywhere, or that he had been seeking it here by sticking his head into the washroom like that – simply could not be recognized in civilized company. The second was that if Holmes had a migraine, then the admittedly overzealous efforts that Mary had gone to in masking the natural scents of a wash room would no doubt offend Holmes' senses, and Watson had brought him here to do the exact opposite of offending them further.

"I'll open the window," Watson informed him, brushing the door open and leaving Holmes in the hall.

Watson glanced furtively about as if he expected to find Mary lurking in a corner in disapproval of Holmes' comment about her decorating, then swept a few of the more malodorous decorations into a drawer. Then he cleared his throat for no good reason, smoothed his mustache with his thumb as if it might tattle on him, and opened the window a few inches to let in some fresh air.

When he returned to the hall, Holmes had wandered back to the stairwell and was peering down into the foyer with his mouth and nose buried in a fistful of the blanket. "Holmes?" Watson approached him slowly because he feared spooking the man as if he were a wild animal, a fear which was probably only half irrational. "Holmes," Watson called again.

Holmes did not outwardly react to the utterance of his name, but something in his poise betrayed his awareness of Watson's proximity. "That man was a murderer." A hint of disbelief colored his tone, as if he could not believe that he might have missed discovering that sooner.

Watson cocked his head to the side and stuttered a glance at the wall on his right. "What man?"

"The man with the stolen watch." Holmes had lowered the blanket only enough to speak without garbling his words, and the effect was a hollowed one on the timbre of his voice. "Watson, we must find him. He murdered the man he took it from. A relative, most likely."

For a moment, Watson wasn't sure how to react to that pronouncement. Then he merely asked, "Do you know where to find him?"

Holmes wavered a bit on his feet, ducking his face into the blanket to take a breath. It was a strange sight, to be sure, and yet even as a curious chill assaulted Watson's spine to see it – an odd enough reaction in itself – the gesture warmed him somehow. He probably should have found it disconcerting how Holmes blatantly sought out the scent of him, but he didn't.

"Holmes?"

Holmes shut his eyes and started shaking his head. "No." It was all but a mournful little wail, that word. Still shaking his head, as if in stark denial of the fact, Holmes added, "Watson, I don't know where he might be. There was no other distinguishing evidence on his person. There's no way to find him again." Holmes grimaced into the blanket and then clenched his eyes shut as he vehemently insisted, "But he killed that man."

Watson reached out to grasp Holmes' elbow through the blanket and attempted to turn him away from the stairs, back toward the washroom. "Holmes, come. I'm sure that after a meal and a rest, you'll feel more yourself."

Holmes wrenched himself free and backed up until he bumped into the wall. "I don't need a rest, Watson. I need to remember – "

"This is the exhaustion talking, Holmes," Watson interrupted. Though he knew that it likely wasn't anything of the sort. No matter Holmes' state of mind, if he said that the man with the watch was a killer, then he probably was. "You need to tend to yourself, old cock. Before you collapse, or worse."

Holmes lifted his head, his eyes puffy and rimmed in the shade of red peculiar to Holmes' brand of overwork and stress. "You don't believe me."

Watson glanced down with a sigh. "I _do_ believe you, old chap. That's the problem."

Holmes blinked at him a few times, clearly bewildered, his face slack with his confusion. "I don't understand."

How to put it delicately? "Holmes…" Watson came closer and raised a hand between them, willing Holmes to take his words in the kindest light, rather than as the insult that Holmes' pride would no doubt strive to make of it. "You are not god. The odds are against you ever seeing that man again, or figuring out who he is, or proving that he has committed murder. I have no doubt that you are right. But there is nothing you can do about it."

When Holmes blinked and looked down, his lips parted in a stunned silence that appeared akin to sudden dejection, Watson experienced a stab of guilt at having crushed whatever emotional attachment Holmes had poured into his assertion. "But he's guilty. Watson, he _is_ guilty – I saw it."

"I know. But it doesn't matter."

"It _has_ to matter!" Holmes exclaimed. "I _saw_ it – I can't do nothing now that I have _seen_ it!"

Watson stared for a moment, his breath slithering out past slightly parted lips. Then he shut his mouth without responding to either the words or the myriad expressions crossing Holmes' features. "Come, my friend. Just come with me."

"But Watson – "

Watson tugged on Holmes' arm and Holmes stumbled forward without a fight. "You reek of sulphur, dear boy."

"I found him out."

"I know," Watson sighed, trying desperately to dampen the stab of sadness that those words engendered in him. "A quick bath, and then some tea, yes? We could both use some tea, I think."

"There must be a way to find him. What if he is planning to kill again?"

"You would have observed signs of that in his mannerisms, don't you think?"

Holmes allowed Watson to draw him into the washroom as he contemplated that, his gaze far away. "No. It was not a premeditated murder, surely. He is an opportunist."

Watson left Holmes standing in the middle of the now aired room and bent over to work the water taps.

"The haphazard nature of his dress, and the strange assemblage of tokens about his person – the watch, for one, but also the mismatching ring he wears, and a pair of cufflinks that do not compliment the rest of his attire – scuffed boots that he obviously does not take proper care of, and yet he paid for a shine just that morning, probably while awaiting the train at his boarding point…"

A rush of water drowned out a few of Holmes' next points and Watson let it, because he couldn't bear knowing that Holmes would obsess over this to no end whatsoever. It happened sometimes – Holmes fixated, but to no avail. This split second observation of a stranger on a train platform, a chance sighting, would haunt the man because he _knew_ that he had let a killer slip through his grasp forever.

Watson straightened and regarded Holmes with the closest approximation of pity that his high regard for the man could allow. Did that stranger on the platform even realize how close he had come to capture? Holmes had seen him for all of a few seconds, and had read him like a shining billet. Only chance had distracted Holmes from immediate pursuit, and now it was forever too late to make amends for it.

"…does not mean that he will not kill again. He has already demonstrated a lack of impulse control in a convenient situation. It only means that he will not consciously _plan_ a second murder. But now that he has crossed the line once, it will be that much easier to do so again. He got away with it, after all; he has no reason to believe that he will not avoid detection a second time. Or a third."

Watson had never really stopped to analyze the reasons for Holmes' blackest moods, for his drug use, for his inability to ever slow down. Was it because of things like this? Did the failure to deduce quickly enough, the knowledge that he was letting people slip past him to commit more crimes, that he had failed to stop them, haunt him that much? Surely Holmes expected too much of himself, and yet…it had been given to him to see these things. Perhaps he felt he bore fault for not using his gifts well enough. Perhaps knowing that drove him to cocaine and morphine in the hopes of drowning it out.

For some reason, it had never before occurred to Watson that Holmes – the most antisocial, calculatedly reserved of men – could have a savior complex. In hindsight, it should have; no man so obsessed with the type of work that Holmes immersed himself in could possibly have been oblivious to the human side of the puzzle. No, the only logical conclusion was that Holmes could _not_ ignore it, protest it though he might. If the humanity of Holmes' work were not an issue, then Holmes could just as easily have sated his need for intellectual stimulation by becoming a proper chemist. Or a criminal.

"Holmes…" Watson raised a hand and found his fingers threatening to brush lightly over the shadowed stubble of Holmes' left cheek. He watched Holmes' brow furrow as he aborted an impulse to draw away from the imminent touch, and when he didn't, Watson let his fingertips trail across a hint of warm skin.

Holmes swallowed with evident difficulty, his eyes abnormally huge in the dim light of the washroom. Then he questioned in a tone that shivered like the wing of a butterfly alight on a flower stem, "Watson? What…?"

"You cannot prevent every crime."

Holmes' cheek ticked in the wake of Watson's touch, and then he simply repeated, "But I saw it." As if he could not comprehend such a statement.

The movement of a shadow and a soft footstep left them both jumping back from each other as if what they were doing were obscene. Watson wondered if perhaps it were, and then Mary appeared in the doorway, her arms full of towels. "There's a pot steeping in the kitchen." She paused to take in the awkward stances of both men, and then her face softened when she caught the trace of guilt that Watson knew he could not hide in his face. Rather than comment on it, Mary smiled and nodded.

Watson glanced away and wondered what she had just given him permission to do, because it was obviously that – assent. "Thank you, Mary." Watson cleared his throat and risked a glance at Holmes, who had absorbed himself in frantic contemplation of the blanket bunched about his slight if masculine form. Holmes obviously thought that they had done something wrong; it was in his unseeing, downcast gaze and the tense manner in which he held himself still on the other side of the room, one degree away from huddled in the corner as if he feared punishment.

Mary set the towels on the dry sink beside the basin and turned to regard Holmes. She then looked to Watson, a curious expression concealed in the careful set of her features. She must have seen something there to answer her unspoken query, because she straightened almost imperceptibly as she moved toward Holmes. "I've set out some of John's old nightclothes in the spare bedchamber. They should do for tonight. Your own will be washed and dried by tomorrow, midmorning."

Holmes raised his head and then startled to find her so close. Improperly close. "I…thank you, Miss Mor– _Missus_…Watson." At first, it seemed that the end of his fractured sentence was the purposeful address of Mary by her proper title, but then Holmes repeated, "Watson."

Watson shook himself back to the moment. "Yes, Holmes?"

"I would thank you to call your wife off."

Mary smiled sadly at him and then reached for the blanket that Holmes had freshly clutched about himself to ward off any hint of indecency. "Now, Mister Holmes. Do behave."

Holmes raised his shoulder and shrank back just before her hand touched him. "Watson, I insist that you stop her."

Watson frowned and placed a hand on Mary's arm to stall her next attempt to touch him. "Holmes, you're overreacting."

"I do not want her near me!" Holmes insisted.

Mary drew her head back as if she had just noticed him, despite the fact that she had purposefully advanced on him. "You are threatened by me."

Holmes attempted to scorn the notion, but the sound he made merely highlighted a grain of truth to what Mary had just said.

As if she had never actually seen him before, Mary amended that to, "No, you are _afraid_ of me."

"I am not afraid of you," Holmes scoffed. The denial fell flat.

Watson studied Holmes for a moment, trying to make eye contact and failing. "Holmes, she isn't going to hurt you."

"She has already hurt me." The moment Holmes heard his own words, he winced and appeared to stifle a moment of panic at speaking too honestly. "I should leave. If you'll allow me to borrow something to wear, I will go. I do not wish to trouble you further."

Watson coaxed Mary to the side and approached Holmes himself. "Be reasonable, old man. You're in no condition to leave right now."

"I want to go!"

Watson jumped at the unexpected shout, then regrouped with an effort. "Holmes, I know that you do not feel it, but you are still in shock. As your doctor, I cannot allow you to leave yet."

Holmes pressed his lips into a flat line and threw a wary look to where Mary stood, narrowly shielded from him by Watson's body. When he dropped his eyes to the floor again, his face darkened with something wholly incongruous to the situation.

Watson glanced over his shoulder and exchanged a puzzled look with Mary. Then he turned back to ask Holmes, "Does her presence bother you so much?"

"Are you serious?" Holmes demanded. He barely suppressed a cringe at the cracked edge to his own voice and then looked pointedly at the half-filled bathtub. Watson could still see him shivering in poorly concealed surges, shoulders jerking under the blanket each time a fresh wave crested.

Watson tried, but could not determine whether the renewed force of Holmes' shaking were due to cold, shock, or something coinciding with Mary's presence. "She is harmless, Holmes."

"She is not harmless," Holmes spat, shuffling back another step. He jerked when that step brought him into contact with the wall.

"She is here to help," Watson insisted. "At my request. Holmes, she has assisted you before when this has happened. What is the matter with you?"

Holmes threw a furious look at Mary, then shifted his gaze to Watson, where his eyes betrayed something very nearly akin to panic. "Watson, please – do not ask me to explain. Just make her go."

Watson's brows drew down in suspicion. "Why? What do you see?"

"Watson – "

"I insist that you tell me what you are on about."

Holmes glared at him in defiance and then restlessly adjusted the blanket to better cover himself, as if he were using it as a barrier to ward off Watson's questions. "Go to hell."

Watson's jaw dropped in shock at such an unwarranted response. "Holmes!"

"_What_?!" Holmes shouted, sending Watson scuttling back several steps. "What do you want of me, Watson?"

"Nothing! I want you to be well – "

Holmes gave a mirthless, mean little chuckle. "That is not what you want."

Watson drew himself up, gritting his teeth to keep his worst retorts in check. "How dare you imply that I don't – "

"How dare _you_!" Holmes cut in, furious, the blanket clutched to his collarbones. "What the hell is this, Watson? You take my clothes off in the middle of the foyer while I am too insensate to stop you, and then you drag me up here half naked – you won't let me leave, and then you _touch_ me, and then your _wife_ – " Holmes choked himself off with a visible effort and retreated back to the corner of the room. He cast a longing look at the door that Watson just happened to be blocking as he went, though.

Watson took in rapid, shallow breaths through his open mouth, shocked silent by the burgeoning fear on Holmes' face. He wasn't mad at Watson, though his tone could have been mistaken for fury; no, he was terrified. Watson had basically trapped him up here for reasons he did not understand, or so it must have seemed to Holmes, and it scared the wits out of him. Watson could only imagine what Holmes must have thought was going on.

His voice carefully neutral, Watson explained, "I removed your clothing because I thought the smell of the explosives had trapped you in the fit. And I wanted to get you in a bath because the scent of it lingers, not to mention that you're in sore need of a washing anyway. As for Mary, she is only helping out of kindness. You've run yourself ragged on this case, and you need to first eat a decent meal, then sleep to regain your strength. Holmes, how many times have I insisted that you remain here after one of your collapses?"

Holmes shivered in silence for a moment, his eyes tracking Mary's shadow, but not her actual body as she moved behind Watson to reach the water taps. The abrupt silence seemed deafening, and through it, Watson could hear how labored Holmes' breathing had become.

Watson took a step away from the doorway and Holmes tensed as if to fight. "Holmes, I apologize for the way this must appear to you. But I assure you, I have only your wellbeing in mind." He paused, then offered, "You're being paranoid. It is surely a delayed reaction to what happened today, and to the poor care to which you have subjected yourself all week."

"I am not paranoid." Holmes licked his lips and put his back to the wall, his stance defensive. "You are looking at me the way you look at her, and _she_ is trying to manipulate you into acting upon it."

Watson's mouth worked a moment in silence, and then he breathed, "_What_?"

"John." Mary laid her hand on Watson's shoulder, arresting his attention. "He's right to question my presence. It's improper at this stage." She turned to face Holmes and collected a quiet brand of dignity. "I apologize if I've offended or disturbed you, Mister Holmes; I must have misread you both. Please don't hold it against my husband."

Holmes examined her as if she were a bug in a display case, mistrustful of the container's ability to keep the specimen away from him. Or perhaps, Watson mused, Holmes was the one behind glass, afraid that his self-imposed isolation would not keep him safe from the grasping fingers and the pins of the entomologists.

Mary seemed to see this as well, because she frowned and hesitated in every way, mentally as well as bodily, returning Holmes' scrutiny with a peculiar look of her own. Then she nodded knowingly, offered an apologetic if uncertain smile, and ducked past Watson to escape into the hallway. The second she left, Holmes sagged in place, the tension bleeding from his limbs. He still regarded Watson with a hint of alien wariness, but nothing near that with which he had watched Mary.

Watson studied Holmes in turn, then angled himself away to move the towels into easy reach of the tub. He affected not to notice the fact that Holmes remained in the corner with his back to the wall as Watson bustled about, and Watson found himself wondering if some tenuous trust had been shattered. Holmes had never looked at him in such a manner, as if Watson were a creature like all others, prone to suspicious behavior, perhaps dangerous in ways that normal men could not imagine because normal men were not Holmes.

"What did she mean?"

Watson's hands fumbled a bar of soap into the dish, and then he straightened to eye Holmes sidelong. "About what?"

"Misreading us." Holmes padded away from the wall and peered down into the still bathwater, then to the door as if to make certain that they were truly alone again. "What did she mean?"

Watson glanced at the wall, then the open window before saying, "I thought you already had that figured out."

"So did I," Holmes allowed, but he seemed uncertain of that. "You are not acting as if you know, however. So I must conclude that any participation on your behalf was involuntary. You don't know what she meant."

"Holmes…" Watson sighed and looked down, then worked the buttons on his undershirt. "Sometimes, old cock, you see things that simply aren't there."

Holmes' eyes flickered up, took in Watson's activity, and then meandered away again. "So you _do _know what she meant."

"No, I do not." Watson's hands flopped to his sides, and then he gestured at random. "I can guess what _you_ thought she meant, though, and quite frankly, I am surprised at you. I had thought that I knew the bounds of your depravity, but to accuse my wife – "

"I'm sorry," Holmes whispered.

Watson strangled the rest of his angry tirade and pursed his lips. "I know you are, Holmes. You can't help yourself." He finished divesting himself of his undershirt, his movements abbreviated and short, and then flung it into a corner before clawing at the tied strings of his small clothes.

Holmes merely watched him from the corners of his eyes, his shoulders hunched and half turned away as if to defend himself from the air of irritation that surrounded Watson. "Are you angry with me?"

Watson sucked in a sharp breath, shut his eyes to force calm, and then flared his nostrils. "Yes. Though I don't want to be, yes. I am very angry."

"Mary did not seem offended – "

"_I _am offended!" Watson yelled without warning, prompting Holmes to trip back a step with his blanket-shrouded hand raised to ward him off. "You did not only accuse her of duplicity, Holmes; you accused _me_! I expect a certain degree of misogyny from you because you have always been that way, but how could you suspect _me_ of such indecency, of – of _taking advantage _of your condition?!"

Holmes shook his head and mumbled an incoherent denial of some sort, his gaze darting over everything in the room save Watson himself, though he couldn't have actually seen anything that his gaze fixed on.

Watson sighed and passed a hand over his eyes before digging his knuckles into his forehead. "Never mind. It's you. It's just who you are."

Holmes glanced up as if he wanted to refute that, and then hated that he couldn't. So he merely repeated, "I'm sorry."

Watson nodded, his mouth pressed into an uneven line. "Yes, you are." He kicked a towel out of his way and then reached for the blanket cinched tight over Holmes' shoulders. "Come on; into the bath." When he realized that Holmes was staring at him with wide, wounded eyes, he dropped his hand and suppressed a sigh. Impatience and a tried temper made him prance and glance about, and then he peered hard at Holmes. "Holmes, I am tired and sore, and my shoulder is killing me, not to mention my damn leg. I want tea, and then I want my bed. Whatever's going on in your head, it can wait that long."

Holmes prevaricated for a second, then dropped his gaze and slowly shuffled himself out of the blanket. When he hesitantly extended it, Watson snatched it from him and tersely bundled it into a pile in the hallway. Then he closed the washroom door to a sliver. Holmes had wrapped his arms about his lightly shivering form by the time he turned back into the room, for all intents stuck in his chosen corner.

With a long suffering sigh, Watson relented. "I didn't mean it, Holmes." He gripped Holmes shoulder and pulled him into the center of the room. Holmes came without protest. "I apologize for even saying it."

"I don't mean to be like this," Holmes offered mournfully.

Watson nodded and tucked a tuft of unruly hair behind Holmes' ear. "I know, old boy." He allowed himself a moment of private affection and then moved to undo the buttons of Holmes' small clothes while Holmes hugged himself and trembled from exhaustion as much as the faint chill in the air. "I don't know why it irritates me so."

Holmes refused to look at him while Watson undressed him, uneasy in his presence in a manner that Watson did not usually find himself subjected to. "Don't you?"

"No," Watson sighed. He finished with the buttons and coaxed Holmes' arms down so that he could slip the sleeves down and off. "If I did, it wouldn't happen."

Holmes accepted this with a minute nod and then he looked up. His examination of Watson was quiet and sad this time, not the least bit piercing in his usual way of looking at people. When Watson offered a quirky smile, all mustache, Holmes tried to echo it back, but he merely appeared sick.

"Right," Watson murmured. "Alright, off with it." He indicated Holmes' drawers and stepped back. "Into the bath, now. Come."

Holmes fumbled on his feet and reached to remove the remaining undergarment himself, fingers tangling into the drawstrings.

Watson peeled off his own last article of clothing, completely unselfconscious at finding himself naked and within arm's reach of his former flat mate, and tossed the garment aside to join his undershirt. He felt no shame at being bared to the skin, in part because military life had largely inured him to it, but also because he and Holmes had been naked together before. Sharing rooms had allowed for little privacy in some venues, especially considering a limited supply of hot water at 221B and their propensity for coming home filthy at the same time, thanks to their casework. Watson was well used to sharing a bath to ensure that neither of them had to suffer a cold washing.

It appeared that the strings had gotten the better of Holmes as Watson swished a hand through the pleasantly heated water, so he tugged Holmes' hands out of the way and worked his fingernails into the knots without asking. Holmes just stood there, placidly chewing a fingernail while Watson undid the damage he had wrought trying to undress himself. Against his better judgment, Watson chuckled at that thought.

Holmes glanced at him without turning his head, one eyebrow raised in silent inquiry.

Watson met Holmes' gaze from under lowered brows and smiled softly. "You really are completely hopeless sometimes, my dear Holmes."

Thankfully, Holmes took this as the fond comment it was meant to be, and chuffed back, though the mirth sounded a little sporadic. "I do seem to have made a mess of myself."

Watson snorted in good-natured humor. "I believe I may need a pair of scissors."

"Indeed?" Holmes gave him a tiny, mischievous grin. "Mother Hen, I do believe that I ruin enough of my clothing without your assistance."

"What can I say? I am ever your poor mimic."

Holmes frowned abruptly and looked down at the space between them. "You are not a mimic."

Watson finally managed to pry the knot apart and he unthreaded the strings before responding. "Let's not start another disagreement, shall we?" He gestured at the undone drawstrings and retreated again to the side of the bathtub.

"Quite." Holmes finished undressing and followed Watson, well used to offering his assistance without comment. If he took any verbal notice of it, Watson would refuse his help. It was an old dance between them, like the trip up the stairs earlier.

Watson allowed Holmes to steady him as he leaned heavily on Holmes' shoulder to keep the weight off his bad leg. Holmes winced in sympathy when Watson bit his lip to hold back the breath that threatened to quicken at the sharp jolt of pain running through his thigh as he stepped into the tub. Watson was glad, for the moment, that Holmes had managed to drive Mary off because this favor – and yes, Watson was well aware that his allowing Holmes to help him was a favor to _Holmes_, strange as it seemed – was not something that Watson would ever bestow upon her. She was a kind soul, but she would cluck and murmur encouragements that he had absolutely no need of, and even though she would not look on him with pity, he would suspect that it lurked under the too-kind, too-understanding smile that she would treat him to when he looked up to thank her, and he would resent her for it.

Holmes did none of those things – felt neither pity nor sympathy; he simply saw that Watson required a hand, and provided it as a duty of friendship. It would never have occurred to Holmes to pity him, or to think him even the smallest bit weak for his old injury. If anything, Holmes imposed his assistance the way he imposed everything else – pipe smoke and atonal violin plucking and odious chemical experiments – as if it were his sovereign right to do so. And Watson accepted it the same way he accepted Holmes' assumption that Watson would ever be at his beck and call, even though he wasn't anymore.

Watson covered the pang of remorse at that thought by hissing at the twinge that ran through to his lower back as he twisted to get his left leg into the tub without actually standing on his right. Holmes looked surprised at Watson's obvious discomfort – he was accustomed to a certain degree of reservation and stoicism regarding Watson's minor disability – but his only response was to grip Watson by both arms now and lower him gently into the water. Once Watson was settled with his knees drawn up in one half of the tub, Holmes climbed into the other half, slipping on his way down. He always did so; no matter how careful Holmes was, his heels always skidded out from under him by the time he hit a crouch. It was like the man couldn't gracefully land in a bathtub, but just had to fall those last few inches.

As always, Watson eyed his bathing companion for possible bruising after his ungainly decent, and then passed the soap. As if it were choreographed, Holmes fumbled his limbs about before taking it, knocking Watson's foot before he settled, the same as ever. Strangely, this caused a pang in Watson's stomach, and Watson paused upon realizing that the closest description of the feeling he could come up with was one of homesickness.

They washed in silence, first lathering themselves, and then twisting about to scrub at each other. Watson wondered at it every time their hands migrated past the bounds of their own bodies. They did nothing indecent – never had – and yet Watson knew very well that this was not natural behavior between two grown men. A witness would have taken them for deviants, however innocent the act.

Watson glanced up, sick at the sense of guilt slithering through him, that he should be touching another man in this manner and accepting that touch back under the same roof that he shared with his wife. He glanced aside as if to deny a betrayal, and his eyes widened when he caught sight of Mary's reflection in the mirror, her body mostly hidden by the angle. His eyes flew to the door as if the image in the glass were a specter and she were not actually standing there, bearing witness to something so private that it shamed him to be seen in the midst of it.

Holmes once again remained oblivious to the presence of a spectator, his fingernails scraping across Watson's back with single-minded focus as he sought to leave Watson's skin pink and almost painfully clean. Mary's eyes tracked to Holmes' perfectly expressionless face, and she seemed confused, as if she had expected to find something else there. Then she met Watson's gaze again, her own brow furrowed in puzzlement, shaking her head as if to negate the flush spreading across Watson's mortified features.

"Holmes." Watson caught at Holmes' hands and pushed him back, gentle but firm.

A flash of concern ghosted across Holmes' features. "Too rough?"

"No, it's…" Watson focused for a moment on the surface of the water and then glanced up again, silently pleading with Holmes not to make him explain.

Holmes drew back even farther and brushed Watson's hands away. "Of course. Mary." He picked up a scrub brush and picked at it before working the bar of soap over the bristles with a concentration that betrayed some other emotion entirely. "I apologize. You know how often I forget myself."

"It's not that," Watson countered.

Holmes glanced up, and though his mouth smiled, his eyes remained hooded and distant. "It's alright, dear boy. I assure you, I understand."

Watson stared at him for a long moment, unaware at first that he had begun shivering himself, and then he looked desperately up at Mary. He wasn't sure what he was begging her for, but she seemed to know already. She smiled to reassure him, but it had the exact opposite effect on his nerves. He noted the way her shadow slipped down the door frame as she stepped into the room.

The creak of the hinges brought Holmes' head up, and he froze when he realized that Mary was watching them. Watson saw him shrink and then fold a fraction into himself as he resumed scrubbing soap too vigorously into the wash brush. Mary knelt at the side of the tub and covered Holmes' hands to still them, ignoring the sharp flinch that her touch engendered. Holmes' fingers seemed to go numb as she pried both objects from his hands and set the brush aside on the bath shelf. Then he curled inward as if he expected to be struck, his face pointedly averted from both Mary and Watson.

Watson could only gape as Mary worked the bar of soap into a thick lather before setting that aside as well, and then Holmes shied violently from the hands that she worked into his hair. Watson could tell that Holmes very nearly panicked at that, but Mary kept on, her fingers scrubbing gently at his scalp and tufting his chaotic hair into spikes and clumps with a single-minded, if obscure, purpose.

"Watson." Holmes' voice shook terribly and the sound of it barely reached Watson's ears across the negligible space between them. It should have been comical, how Mary's ministrations left him very nearly petrified. "What is she doing?"

Watson's voice croaked inaudibly, though he felt it rattle and die in his throat, and he replied, "Washing your hair?"

"_Why_?" Holmes demanded, shivering uncontrollably now. He couldn't seem to look at either of them, though it appeared as if he tried; he was too frightened by this development to manage it.

It was Mary who answered, "Because it is filthy, Mister Holmes."

Holmes twitched at the sound of her voice, soft as it was, and tried to back himself out of reach. The confines of the bathtub thwarted his effort.

"John, do calm him, will you?"

"I…" Watson's gaze stuttered rapidly back and forth between them.

"Watson, please…" Holmes folded farther to the side, appearing desperate to get her hands off of him.

"Mary, what are you doing?"

Mary glanced up, her expression unreadable. Since Watson seemed unable to act to diffuse Holmes' mounting discomfort, she redoubled her efforts to cleanse his wild hair and said, "I realize that my husband is often blind to his own motivations, but do you truly imagine that I suffer from the same difficulty?"

Predictably, this merely made Holmes' discomfort worse, and he twisted back toward the far edge of the bathtub, finally dislodging Mary's hands. Once free, he curled both of his hands over the porcelain rim and hid his face in the shadows cast by his own shoulders, his back to Mary and his bared shoulder blades flexing with each shallow breath he took, a faint sheen of moisture gleaming on the skin stretched taut over his dorsal ribcage, his nose nearly touching the wall.

Watson roused himself enough to say, "Mary, perhaps you should go."

Mary settled back on her heels. "I don't think so, my dear husband. I believe that all of our interests would be best served by my remaining here."

"Nothing indecent has passed," Holmes exclaimed, his face still all but buried in the plaster. "I swear, we are only washing."

Mary studied his back as Watson turned no less than twelve shades of red, and then she sighed. "I know, Mister Holmes."

From the looks of things, Holmes couldn't determine how best to react to Mary's pronouncement, so he tried, "We have no need of a chaperone; a lady should not be exposed to such… I will exit this room until Watson has finished. You need not be concerned that there is anything untoward occurring if we separate – "

"There is no need." Mary reached for him and continued to run resolute fingers through his hair, interspersed now with water transported in the cups of her hands. Holmes flinched from each one. "I have seen nothing untoward happening in this room." She wrapped a gentle hand over his shoulder and attempted to turn him away from the wall. "John, dear, do make yourself useful, won't you? Mister Holmes is absolutely covered in soap, and the both of you are liable to catch a chill if you linger much longer. The water is cooling."

Holmes dropped his shoulder and rolled it away from her hand, in the process shielding himself more fully from her view. "I am not decent. You should not…" His respirations increased in tempo, lending his voice a shaken quality as he once again protested, "Watson, your wife!"

Watson could not help but find the moment surreal, like the shadowed dreams of the war that his mind still plagued him with on occasion. He saw himself reaching out to help rinse the soap suds from Holmes' bared arms even though he thought that he should have done better to remove Mary's hands from his friend's skin. Holmes swallowed audibly and gave Watson a look of such longing mixed with the helplessness of a situation he could not understand that Watson's hand paused near his jaw line to cup it, and Holmes' eyes grew wide at some insinuation that Watson was not aware of making, and which Holmes seemed terrified to see in the face of his only friend. And then Mary pushed her sleeves up to her elbows and reached down below the water line to put her hands on the smooth skin of Holmes' stomach.

It should have come as no surprise that Holmes could not handle the implications of such actions on both of their parts, especially not in his current state of agitation and lingering nerves. The immediate withdrawal overcame Watson's mortification at what Mary had just done, and he caught Holmes up around the torso before he slipped into the water. "No…no, no…Holmes, don't. Stay here!"

Mary froze for a second and then shot to her feet, dripping water along the floor as Watson struggled to stop Holmes from curling up, because in spite of his fingers clamped white-knuckled over the rim of the tub, he would go under. And like this, overwhelmed and seeking refuge inside of himself, he would not rouse himself enough to realize he was drowning in a mere foot and a half of bathwater. His nerves had been too sorely tried this day already.

Mary plunged her hand into the water behind Watson and yanked the drain plug, then stood back as the water gurgled and swirled away, leaving two wet, naked men shivering against the porcelain.

"John – "

Watson pierced her with an affronted glare over his shoulder and snapped, "Get out."

"I'm sorry. I thought – "

"You thought _what_?" he demanded, covering Holmes' exposed ear to hold his head to his chest. "You know what he's like – how could you come in here and make it worse?"

Mary shook her head vehemently and backed up against the dry sink. "John, I swear. I thought – "

"Just _don't_!" Watson hissed, furious beyond words. He should have felt some shame at this tableau, just a hint at least since he was crouched naked in a bathtub with his best friend tucked between his legs, crushing him close, but he couldn't feel anything aside from angry and protective. "Just get out, Mary. _Leave_!"

Mary nodded, her chest rising with each gasping breath as she tried to absorb what had just happened. She pushed herself toward the door and then offered in a meek, shuddering voice, "I thought it would help. I truly thought he wanted some part of – only, it seemed – " She cut herself off before she said anything more damning than that, swallowed with her eyes on the floor, and then finished, "I did not mean him harm." Then she rushed from the room, the door swinging wide in her wake to bang against the wall. Watson listened to her footsteps thumping away down the corridor, footfalls obscured in a swish of skirts and nightclothes, and then the door to their bedroom clicked shut.

Watson listened to himself breathing raggedly in the silence, then gulped to cover the sound for a moment. Holmes' fingernails dug into the porcelain and Watson tried to dislodge him so that he could get them both out and dry, to no avail. In the end, he had to remain there with Holmes clutched to his chest and strain to reach the towels piled on the dry sink. He dragged them all into the tub and tucked them about both their forms until they were both relatively insulated from the chill of the bathtub, and then he rocked back and forth along with Holmes' instinctive movements, his chin digging into the top of Holmes' head, eyes on the whorls of plaster decorating the ceiling above them. The patterns were reminiscent of the puckers of scar tissue on Watson's shoulder.

At some point, Watson became aware of Holmes' signature mumbling, and he shut his eyes as if he could deafen himself by refusing to look. He should not have yelled. He also should have stopped Mary when Holmes asked him to, but it was too late for that. Too much unexpected stimulation, Watson thought. A strange person's too-intimate touch. He should have made her leave. Truthfully, he didn't know why he hadn't.

A wave of trembling gripped Holmes and Watson tried to mold him more tightly to his chest. Holmes held himself in a rigid, ungiving ball, however, and all Watson could do was draw one of the towels up around Holmes' shoulders and tuck it under his jaw. "Holmes… Come on, old boy. It's just you and me. Try to come back."

"…scent of lavender, peppermint soap…hair washed not three hours ago, brewed Darjeeling tea, laid out biscuits, not fresh, smear of honey on left cuff of nightgown…"

It took Watson a moment to realize that Holmes was describing Mary, and he ducked his face in against Holmes' neck. "I'm sorry. I should have taken you home."

"…constricted pupils, tremor in right hand, sleeve pressed to mouth to muffle breathing, rapid steps…Watson, she is crying."

Watson lifted his face just enough to confirm that Holmes was, if not alright, at least mildly present. "Who?"

"Your wife. She is crying."

"Oh, for…" Watson hugged him forcibly enough to wring a strangled grunt from his lungs. "Holmes, don't worry about that. She'll be fine."

"But she was right, and she must now be crying. It was imminent when she left the room."

Watson nodded and felt horrible both for giving a damn that he had upset his wife under the circumstances, and for not caring enough to go sooth her. "I'll see to her later."

"You should see to her now."

"I'll see to _you_ now, Holmes; she can wait."

"But she was right. Watson, you should go to her."

Watson stifled a lost groan and shook his head where it rested against Holmes' cheek. A moment later, he risked asking, "Right about what?"

Holmes shifted as if to gain distance, though in actuality, he pressed closer to Watson. Miserably, he whispered, "All of it. I'm a fraud, Watson."

"What? No," Watson averred. "Holmes, you are the farthest thing from it."

"I have abused your friendship and your trust," Holmes insisted. "I tried not to but the effect was the same."

"How can you – "

"Look where we are, Watson." Holmes shifted again and dragged his nose up the seam of Watson's sternum. "Look at what we're doing. You should be with your wife, and instead, you are sitting naked in a bathtub with me. You should be comforting her and asking her forgiveness for speaking harshly, but you don't even care. And it's my fault – I encouraged you to be like this."

Watson frowned into Holmes' hair, his eyes trained unseeing on the gleam of condensation staining the inner surface of the bathtub. "Holmes, I would hardly call this encouragement."

"You don't see it, but she does. She knows."

"What she knows," Watson breathed with studied deliberation, "is that you are my dearest friend. She accepts that."

His voice low and forbidding, Holmes countered, "This is not friendship, Mother Hen. Even you can tell that this is something perverse. You would not have been so embarrassed otherwise." A moment later, in a whisper that was perhaps not meant to carry, Holmes clarified, "Ashamed."

Watson swallowed, but he could find no logical means of refuting that. He _had_ known. For a long time now, he had indeed known. And he was ashamed by it. Rather then deny it, Watson shifted his hold and pressed his lips to Holmes' hairline. He left them there, unmoving and unwilling to do so. Finally, without lifting his mouth, Watson murmured, "If it is anyone's fault, it is mine. You don't know any better."

"Pray, do not insult me on top of it."

Watson shook his head. "It is an observation, Holmes; not an insult. If you had been capable of preventing anything between us, I am certain that you would have done so long ago. Falling prey to these vices is not in your nature, nor even within your ability to consciously desire; I know you." He breathed out softly and Holmes twitched at the rush of cool air past his temples. "If you want this, it is only because you cannot find a way to stop yourself, and that speaks to a lack of experience with it. _I_ have no such excuse."

Holmes squirmed and then planted a hand against Watson's chest in an effort to push away. "You should go to your wife. I am fine now."

Watson refused to let him go. "You are not fine, now or ever. I was always a fool to delude myself otherwise."

Tellingly, Holmes did not argue the merits of that remark; he merely reiterated, "Please go to your wife."

Watson shifted and Holmes stiffened in his arms. "No."

"Watson." A bald warning, that tone.

It wasn't a refusal so much as a plea this time when Watson whispered again, "No, Holmes. Whatever else has happened tonight, she imposed on you. I will not go to her now."

A shiver of air carried another utterance of Watson's name.

"You said yourself that she had already hurt you."

"She did, but unknowingly; it was not _her_ action that caused me harm."

No, Watson thought clearly. It certainly was not Mary who first betrayed Holmes. It was Watson himself for pursuing her. For leaving. His voice thick with unspecified feeling, Watson murmured, "I know. God help me, I know. But I cannot wish that I hadn't."

Holmes nodded. "You love her."

"Yes." Watson shut his eyes over a grimace because he could admit it of one, but not the other, who equally deserved the declaration. "Sometimes I wish otherwise."

Holmes did not nod, but something in his restlessness betrayed acknowledgement, and an awareness of the layered meaning to what Watson had said. "Watson, please. Let me leave now. I cannot do this to you."

Watson swallowed hard and blinked into the shadows of the washroom. "No. Come to bed with us."

Holmes started but remained within the circle of Watson's arms.

"Come to bed," Watson repeated. "Mary has already given her permission."

"Watson, stop this immediately." Holmes shrugged his shoulders, but it was a halfhearted bid for freedom.

"Why? If she was right – "

"It does not matter that she is." This time, when Holmes twisted, Watson let him go. They appraised each other warily, and then Holmes stated, "You would only leave again, Watson. I would rather not have this to lose."

Watson stared, his eyes wider than they should have been, a perfect match to Holmes' own harried expression. "You would not lose this."

Holmes did not have to call Watson a liar; his lack of reaction did that well enough on its own.

"Holmes – "

"I know you, John." Holmes licked his lips and leaned back in search of metaphorical distance, if the confines of the bathtub would not allow him physical distance. "You cannot be other than you are. You mean well, but this will end badly for me."

"There is no reason it has to – "

"You are married," Holmes cut in, his voice intense in its gentleness. "I am not. I have no claim on either of you."

Watson glanced at his hands where they had moved to wring a towel, and then he looked up to fix Holmes with a non-comprehending expression. "How do you _not_?"

Holmes started to shake his head, and then left off with a frown, not as if he found Watson's statement incomprehensible, or ignorant, or naïve, but more as if he had not considered that the formless brand of need that characterized Holmes' covetousness of their friendship could have been mirrored in Watson, who certainly showed that need to a far lesser extent. So far less as to be a figment of Holmes' overactive imagination, an anomaly that only seemed like need because Holmes himself needed so terribly to see it echoed back. Holmes broke eye contact a second later and parted his lips just a fraction, enough to moisten them as he inhaled a whispered, shivering breath, his gaze unseeing though it hovered somewhere in the vicinity of Watson's raised knee.

Watson swallowed and grasped the rim of the bathtub to lever himself forward. Holmes held himself unnaturally still, save for a flutter of eyelashes as he breathed in again, barely enough to fill his lungs much less sustain himself on. Then he looked farther aside, eyes wandering until they lit on Watson's shaving table. A squelch of flesh sliding on damp porcelain fell hollow, muffled by the towels piled all around them, as Watson sought to brace his knee and reach out. When the pads of Watson's fingers touched on Holmes' cheek, Holmes closed his mouth to swallow with visible difficulty. His eyelids flickered indecisively before Holmes settled on a single blink followed by a fortifying breath. Watson cupped his jaw, stubble gritty against his palm, and Holmes ducked his nose to push against Watson's fingers, like an alley cat undone by a single kindness. His eyes slid shut as he exhaled a warm, soft breath against Watson's skin. It was as much of a surrender as Sherlock Holmes was capable of, but it was enough.

Watson felt his own chest compress and stutter as he attempted to breathe evenly and failed. He shifted his legs with absolutely no grace, wincing at the squeaks that his skin produced as he moved, and braced his right hand on the bathtub rim near Holmes' shoulder. With his left hand, he tipped Holmes' face as much toward himself as Holmes would allow, which was not much, and then rubbed his thumb along Holmes' cheekbone as he leaned down. Holmes bowed his head a fraction, bringing his lips near the sensitive skin of Watson's inner wrist only by coincidence, as Watson gently pressed his closed mouth to Holmes' temple in a fraternal, but by no means chaste, kiss.

Holmes' breath left him suddenly, bathing Watson's wrist in a series of sharp, irregular bursts of warmth. He tensed, straightening his back in the process and drawing himself up where he sat, but he didn't move away. Watson's next press of lips fell near the hinge of Holmes' jaw and Holmes stiffened in a vain bid to hide the subtle shudder that ran through him. He raised his chin as Watson mouthed along his jaw, his head held loosely in place by Watson's hand, and then strangled some nonspecific sound that threatened to vibrate its way from his vocal chords as Watson ducked down to mouth at his throat.

The mingled sounds of their breathing grew harsher in the dead silence of the washroom, Watson's terrified at the thought that he may have gone too far, and Holmes' driven perhaps by the same thing, though Watson could never have been sure. He only knew that when he left off tonguing the hollow of Holmes' throat and brought them face to face, Holmes was shivering in his grasp, his lips parted as he struggled to dampen the sounds of his respirations, eyes firmly shut. Holmes' hands remained clenched in relatively safe locations – a handful of the towel covering his groin, perhaps to make sure it stayed there, while the fingernails of his other hand anchored him to the rim of the bathtub as if he feared being torn away from it.

Watson felt his eyelids grow heavy as he watched Holmes shudder in barely perceptible waves. There was no element of eroticism in this. Watson had expected there to be quite a bit of it – arousal, lust, something to highlight the illegality of carnal displays between two grown men, something to remind Watson to be ashamed of himself for starting this – but nothing of the sort seemed to have passed between them. Maybe it was because Holmes' want and need of him was characterized by an odd, inconsistent sort of innocence – a tainted purity, if such a thing were possible. More likely, it was simply because Watson could not look on this – on Holmes trembling and waiting and leaning into his touch as if starved for even a moment's affection – and see a perversity. It was not perverse at all; in fact, Watson found the whole experience thus far to be inexpressibly sad.

Watson felt more than heard the ragged quality of Holmes' breathing as he exhaled lightly against Watson's lips. Watson held their faces close enough that even though their noses didn't brush, he swore he could feel the tingling of ultra-fine hairs disturbed against his skin. A tiny sound scraped past Holmes' locked throat as he swallowed, muscles working under Watson's hand, and then Watson closed that last miniscule distance between them.

They did not kiss, not properly. Watson suckled gently at Holmes' lower lip and then nibbled around the outside of his mouth, his mustached brushing along Holmes' lips such that Holmes opened his mouth just a little bit farther, but it wasn't a kiss at all. Watson pulled back an inch, regarded Holmes' shuttered features, and then pecked Holmes' chin, the corner of his mouth, the faint divot of his philtrum, and then with no preamble whatsoever, Watson threaded his tongue past Holmes' lips.

Holmes froze in place, all but petrified to the point where Watson couldn't even be certain that he continued breathing at first. Watson didn't force their mouths together; he licked along Holmes' gums in an almost sleepy manner, teeth catching at Holmes' upper lip, his mustache tickling Holmes' nose enough to make him crinkle it. Watson shifted his body until he could brace his right knee so that it just touched Holmes' hip, his left slipping between Holmes' ankles. When Watson angled himself closer, Holmes twisted to fully face him, his right calf nestling against the left side of Watson's ribcage. Watson scooted closer, and that leg wrapped around him just enough to be noticeable, though Holmes kept his foot planted firmly against the bottom of the tub.

Throughout this maneuvering, Watson continued nibbling at Holmes' mouth, his tongue gently prodding for deeper entry. They both settled somewhat into their new positions, limbs loosely intertwined, and Holmes unfurled his hand from the rim of the bathtub. Watson blew out a sharp breath as long fingers curled around his wrist, his hand still cupping Holmes' jaw, though with slightly more force now to hold him in place. Holmes breathed in tattered, staccato bursts as he squeezed Watson's wrist, and then he tilted his head up to properly return Watson's overture.

Watson sucked in a quick breath, pressing their lips tightly together, and when he exhaled, he could just hear himself whine. Holmes opened his mouth to allow him entry and Watson plunged forward, breathing hard through his nose as he crushed them together, raising further up on his knees as if he needed to force Holmes down beneath him. Watson's hand slid down to Holmes' neck, then around to the back of his head, fingers snagging on tangled, unruly hair. Holmes released his wrist and let his hand linger on Watson's forearm for a moment before he grasped at Watson's elbow, and then a few seconds later, his bicep.

A tiny, wanting sound made its way from Holmes' chest to smother against Watson's lips; it could only have been described as a whimper. Watson groaned faintly – he doubted that the sound was even audible – and shoved his tongue deeper into Holmes' mouth, their lips sealing together as Holmes let a second, more desperate noise escape him. Watson bore down on his mouth, sucking greedily at Holmes' tongue when it presented itself and twining his own around the backs of Holmes' teeth. He felt the sharp point of a canine and tilted his head for a better angle, hardly aware of the rest of his body until Holmes let go of his arm in favor of catching himself against the rim of the bathtub.

Watson's eyes flew open just long enough to absorb the fact that he had forced Holmes back and that it seemed a welcome thing, and then he shut them again in favor of feeling the encounter. Holmes had wrapped his right leg around Watson's waist and over his left calf, foot braced on the bottom of the tub between Watson's ankles. At some point, the distance between their bodies had diminished until Watson could feel the heat of imminent contact below, his right thigh pressed hard along Holmes' hip, both of their legs spread to accommodate the other's positions.

Watson opened his eyes again and pulled his mouth away from Holmes' with some difficulty; Holmes followed him, blindly attempting to recapture him, his lips swollen and shining with saliva. They were both panting now, and Watson wondered if Holmes intended to open his eyes at any point in this proceeding. As Watson withdrew, Holmes reclined against the curve of the bathtub, his legs falling wider as a fair measure of tension seeped from his body. Watson looked down and plucked the towels away one by one, dumping them outside of the bathtub without bothering to watch how they fell.

Once Holmes was fully exposed, he turned his head to the side, an avoidant gesture, and checked a shiver that had already expressed itself in the tension that momentarily gripped his thighs. Watson didn't actually look down; he didn't need to see the evidence of Holmes' manhood to know that he was just as aroused by now as Watson himself – which was to say, they both had only slight erections, and nothing more.

Holmes licked his lips and swallowed, his elbows draped over the edges of the tub, fingers once again grasping the rim as if by doing so, he could maintain his grip on himself. Watson reached out and lightly trailed a few random fingers down the column of Holmes' neck, tracing a tendon to his collarbone. He followed the line of Holmes' clavicle to the seam running midline down his sternum, and then lingered for a moment. He could feel Holmes breathing – shuddering gasps that fought to be something less wild and out of control. Watson indulged himself by counting out the thumps of Holmes' heartbeat pounding beneath the pads of his fingers, and then he let gravity drag his hand lower.

A fingernail caught on Holmes' navel and Holmes twitched with a startled grunt before going deathly still again. Watson did not hesitate; he smoothed his palm over Holmes' stomach, rubbed a few circles to ease the quivering tension there, and then dipped his hand past damp, wiry curls of hair to gently cup Holmes' testicles and nascent erection.

Holmes let out a strangled, pitchy grunt and shifted as if finding Watson's hand there were a shock, despite the obvious journey that Watson had sketched across his skin on the way down. Holmes checked himself a second later and pointedly lowered his hips back to the bottom of the tub. Watson followed the movement, his fingers curled under Holmes' scrotum as if he were holding something fragile.

Watson offered Holmes a fond, languid blink even though Holmes couldn't see him with his eyes so resolutely closed. "Holmes," he rasped, his voice rough and somehow more affectionate for it. "Look at me."

Holmes lifted his chin, perhaps in understated defiance of the request, or of his own desire not to look. Then he blinked his eyes open and trained a wary, sidelong gaze up at Watson. If Watson hadn't known him quite as well as he did, he would have mistaken the fear glittering in his eyes for arrogance.

Watson held that gaze until Holmes had to swallow and visibly force himself not to look away, and then he repeated, "Come to bed."

It wasn't a negative response that made Holmes shake his head, merely the regret that a man can feel when he knows he has no choice but to damn himself. He repeated, "This will not end well."

"Trust me," Watson replied. He had not yet moved his hand from between Holmes' legs, and he punctuated his plea with a firm squeeze.

The way Holmes arched his back and squirmed could have been written off as unease, but Watson could feel evidence to the contrary throb lightly against his fingers. "I cannot trust you in this, dear boy." It should have been odd for Holmes, the younger of them, to refer to Watson as if he were a child, but it sounded as right as it always had. "You know I cannot."

Watson leaned forward again, dragging his fingernails along the loose skin of Holmes' scrotal sack, a sensation just sharp enough to elicit a startled gasp and a slight flinch from the veiled threat of a more painful sensation. He crowded Holmes back against the edge of the bathtub and very deliberately angled his hips to press their groins together.

Holmes made a sound as if he were attempting to swallow his tongue, his eyes waxing wider for a fraction of a second before he attempted to shy away from the insistent press of Watson's half-erect prick against his own.

"I don't think you truly believe that," Watson told him, his voice low and intent. He rocked his hips against Holmes' and latched his hand around the back of Holmes' neck when he tried to fling his head to the side in a symbolic bid to distance himself. "I think that you are afraid of what this represents."

Watson pressed his hips forward again and Holmes flinched in earnest. Only Watson's hand on the back of his head kept him from shying, and as if by some esoteric connection of mind to the rest of the body, Holmes seemed unable to draw back while Watson held his head in place. His eyes slanted off to the side, however, and Watson watched Holmes blink into the middle distance, unseeing even though he fought to fix his gaze away from Watson.

"You said that you do not want to have this to lose," Watson went on. He rolled his hips forward to a slow but steady cadence that probably bore some relation to the quality of his words as he spoke. Holmes squirmed and groped at the sides of the bathtub, but with Watson leaning over him and their legs still tangled in with each other's feet, there was no way for him to escape. "You do not fear that you cannot trust me, or even that you cannot trust Mary. You already trust us both, or you would not respond to us when these…these fits overwhelm you."

"Watson…" It was only a gasp of air, Watson's name on Holmes' lips, but it set off the fine trembling that until now, Holmes had not succumbed to – not a shiver of arousal or of damp skin cooling in the bare air – but that shaking that comes when a man's impulse to flee is engaged. Not fear, per se, but a survival instinct nonetheless. "Please, don't," Holmes hissed. "Don't."

Watson wanted to heed that plea – or warning, as it may have been – but what he chose to do was swallow to fortify himself before pressing on. "You fear the control that you cannot have if you allow yourself to want this. You would have it, and you would grow reliant on it, and you would know that someday its loss will be beyond your ability to control – beyond _any_ of our abilities to control."

Holmes grabbed Watson's wrist and attempted to drag his hand from his hair. "Watson, _stop_!"

"It is a softer emotion," Watson continued. He tangled his fingers into Holmes' hair to thwart his efforts at removing his hand. "A weakness. And you think that if you give into it, you will be lost. Then when circumstances beyond our control contrive to put an end to it, you fear what effect it will have on you. You are afraid to know what it is to lose something that you love."

Holmes winced as Watson inadvertently tugged at a few errant clumps of his hair, and then he pressed his other palm to Watson's chest. He didn't push, though; he merely placed his hand there and stopped moving except to breathe.

"Of course it will not end well." Watson released the strands of hair in his possession and pressed himself against Holmes, bowing his back so that they touched from groin to breastbone. Holmes didn't move, and so the hand that he had place over Watson's heart ended up crushed between them. "No ending to this sort of thing can ever be done 'well,' no matter the circumstances, no matter how amicable or gradual – or even sudden and blameless – the parting." Watson sighed softly, pressing his cheek to Holmes' for a moment before craning his neck around to place his mouth at Holmes' ear. "Holmes," he breathed. "I know you believe that by refusing this – by refusing _me_, now – you can save yourself from that ending. But what you have failed to realize is that it is too late." Watson turned his face in to nuzzle Holmes' ear, and then to bury his nose in Holmes' hair. It still carried a faint aroma of sulphur and coal smoke from the train engine. "We are both already lost."

Holmes didn't respond in any way for several long seconds, though Watson could feel the flutter of eyelashes tickling his cheek when Holmes blinked in the midst of contemplation. Finally, still unmoving, Holmes dared to ask, "How do you know?"

It was actually very simple, at least to Watson. To Holmes, who had by choice never explored such things, it would not have been apparent at all. Watson rubbed himself against Holmes again, just to make a point, and then explained, "Because neither of us is aroused beyond what incessant friction demands of the body. What we are doing is obviously not purely about the pursuit of carnal satisfaction. There is no lust to this."

Holmes shifted, and Watson allowed him to draw his head back this time. When Holmes looked at him, Watson could read a hundred indefinable emotions in the shards of brown and chestnut splicing Holmes' irises into a fragmented blaze about his pupils. "Should there be?"

Watson cocked his head to one side and regarded Holmes with a genuine if reluctant affection. He hesitated to give the honest answer for reasons he could not enumerate, and then admitted, "I don't know."

Holmes scrutinized him as if he could read some further response in Watson's strange impassivity, considering their positions and nudity, and Watson's – until now – ignorance of what truly characterized their dysfunctional friendship. He must not have found it because his face fell as he finally lowered his gaze. His head dropped with it, until he could press his forehead to Watson's collarbone and sigh. "This is wrong, Watson. That proves it – even our bodies know that it is wrong."

Of the two of them, Watson would not have expected Holmes to be the one to resist on moral grounds. He opened his mouth and drew a breath to respond, and then the sight of a misplaced shadow stopped him. Though Holmes had registered a third presence, he did not outwardly react to it, at least not in any way that anyone save Watson would have been able to recognize. A moment after Watson noticed Mary's shadow poised beyond the doorway, Holmes bit his lip as he sank back to better fit into the curvature of his half of the bathtub, errant fingers drawing a few towels to once again cover himself, as if he thought it necessary to maintain some paltry semblance of decency now that a lady had entered the scene, no matter how damning their relative positions continued to be.

Considering that Watson remained where he was, pressed up against him, Holmes' attempt counted for very little. Watson watched him trying to muster whatever dignity he had left, and then raised his eyes to Mary's silhouette. She had brought the blanket back, the one that they had wrapped Holmes in down in the foyer. Holmes glanced back as she padded into the room and then accepted the blanket with a gentle sniff of thanks, turning his face back to the wall as he twisted away from Watson and puddled it around his lanky frame.

Mary properly looked away and fixed her gaze instead upon Watson, her body poised in silent apology. She had indeed been crying – it showed in the reddened lines about her slightly puffy eyes – not that Watson had doubted such; Holmes was rarely, if ever, wrong about such things.

In Watson's periphery, Holmes huddled himself deeper into the contours of the bathtub and heaved a long, defeated sigh. No doubt, he thought that he had just ended their friendship, or whatever had been left of it after Watson married. Perhaps he feared that he had damaged the marriage as well, since he had colored upon accepting the blanket, and seemed too ashamed to look up at Mary now. Watson knew that Holmes had disapproved of Watson's engagement out of fear of change – of losing the constant access to Watson that Watson had granted him since they initially took the rooms at Baker Street. It had become evident over the past several months, however, that Holmes did not actually wish to destroy the marriage, no matter how diligent he had been in his efforts to dissuade Watson from it before the actual vows were taken. Mary had been right in the foyer; Holmes gave to them both, and generously. He covered Watson's gambling debts as if he thought that doing so could insulate Watson from any ill-feelings that his unwise monetary indulgences might illicit in the wife who depended on him. Holmes would have let Watson drown in debt and ruin the marriage all by himself if what he really wanted was for Watson to crawl back to their sitting room in defeat.

Watson looked again to Mary, his long-suffering, fatally genteel wife. Of course, she had known of Holmes' regard for Watson. How could she have failed to notice it, even though Watson had willed himself blind? She was not a dumb creature. Her kindness toward Holmes had grown in direct relation to the evidence that Holmes worried more for Watson's stability and happiness – and by extension, Mary's – than for his own selfish want of his friend. In fact, in retrospect, Holmes had never sought very hard to hide that. "Mary…"

Mary nodded and smiled because she understood – she truly did. If she were possessed of a lesser integrity or strength of character, she would have been repulsed by them both – by the perversion sitting right there in her bathtub. But she was possessed of nothing that could ever be called 'lesser.' And she did not, for a moment, hold her husband's earlier fit of temper against him. She saw the cause of it, and in her wonderful heart, she could not find fault with him for it. The way her eyes shone with residual tears betrayed that much, at least. "You belonged to him first," she told Watson, her speech frank and almost too blunt to avoid causing him pain. "It may have taken me the better part of a year, my husband, but I do realize that I only have you now because he allowed it."

Watson shook his head and tried not to look at anything as he finally retreated as far as the bathtub would allow. He felt compelled to deny that, partially out of habit but also because he rankled at the intimation that Holmes could have such power over him that if he had chosen, he could have prevented Watson from marrying her. "That's not true. I married you because I love you."

"I know," Mary acknowledged, though she did so as if she were talking to one of her young students. "And he let you go because he could see that."

Watson pressed his lips together beneath his mustache, made a few noncommittal though defiant noises in his throat, and then huffed as he finally subsided. She was right. He had already admitted to what she had just said, at least in his own mind. Watson sighed, defeated and too exhausted to really care who had won what, then peered up at Mary from the corner of his eye.

One corner of Mary's mouth quirked up in response to Watson's look, but when she reached out, it was to extend her hand to Holmes, not to him.

Holmes turned his head as the appendage entered his field of vision, and then his eyes darted up to hers.

With a frankly disturbing degree of precision, Mary told him, "It is not wrong, Mister Holmes. It is simply something seen too little in this world. Perhaps you will disagree, but _I_ find such a thing to be precious for its rarity. Pray, do not offend me by referring to it as if it were ugly."

Holmes blinked, non-comprehending, and then balked. "How long have you been lurking in the hallway?"

Mary smirked even though by the standards of society, she should have been offended to have Holmes speak to her so. Watson's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline to recognize the coyness of her expression. He had certainly not expected that. "Can't you deduce it, Mister Holmes?"

Holmes bristled, which at least served to obscure the embarrassment and self-consciousness that he must have still felt at being both emotionally and physically vulnerable. "That conversation was not for you," he snarled.

Watson regarded Holmes with a fair amount of surprise. He could not recall ever having heard such venom in the man's voice. A quick glance at Mary revealed her lack of surprise at Holmes' uncivilized tone. She must have expected some degree of hostility, which annoyed Watson. How did Mary come to anticipate reactions that Watson could not himself foresee? Holmes was _his_ friend, not hers.

It took what felt like a full minute for Watson to realize that he was being both selfish of his friend, and unreasonable in his reaction toward Mary's calm expectancy. In actuality, a mere handful of seconds had passed, barely enough time for Holmes to cross his arms defensively over his chest, and for Mary to prudently withdraw her hand before she angered him further with her presumption of familiarity. The dynamic of this situation was odd by definition; they were not having a conversation sanctioned by the guidelines of civil conversation. In fact, in all ways imaginable, they were firmly outside the realm of civility as defined by modern society. If Mary presumed an improper forwardness of manner, it was only because none of them really knew who should take charge. Perhaps, Watson thought, it was Mary's place to presume after all. She was the one legally married to him. If anyone could rightfully grant permission for this…whatever it was to go forward, than it was she. Mary was the only one of the three of them, Watson felt, who had any right to insist at this point.

Mary simply nodded to response. "I know it wasn't, Mister Holmes. I apologize for eavesdropping, of course, but I cannot say that I regret hearing it."

Holmes snorted, glared up at her for a moment, and then took to sulking where he sat. A second later, a sort of frenzied petulance animated him enough to snap, "And what would you know of precious things? Such a preposterous notion – it is not _precious_," he sneered. "It is a vexing, thrice-cursed inconvenience. Take your husband and go."

"I would," Mary replied, demur and self-possessed as Watson had ever seen her. "Except that this is my home, and my bathtub, and you happen to have more firm a hold on my husband than I have."

Watson started. "Mary, that is not – "

"Do not lie to me, John."

The rest of Watson's denial fizzled in his throat, and then he shut his mouth to be stunned in a silence that aspired – rather ridiculously – to be dignified.

Mary glanced again at Holmes, appraising him in a manner startlingly like Holmes' own method of examining people. "I forgive you your temporarily lacking manners, Mister Holmes. I am well aware that you only speak sharply out of embarrassment, and the embarrassment in this case is my fault for listening to a conversation which should have been private."

"_You_ forgive _me_?" Holmes echoed in disbelief.

Mary tipped her chin with a rather haughty air. "Yes, Mister Holmes. I do." Then she sobered, and the expression on her face was at once kind, accepting, and sad. "John is right, I believe. It has been a long time coming, and I can see that you have both fought yourselves over it, but this has gone on long enough. I have watched you try to hide how your health has deteriorated since I wedded John, and I have watched my husband suffer knowing that he is powerless to help you on account of his duty to me. But I have a duty as well, to my husband's happiness and wellbeing, and I do not consider it a hardship to ease his mind by seeing to the health of yours. You have more than proven your selflessness when it comes to John. Now allow us to prove ours in return." She extended her hand, slim and steady, offering this time rather than insisting. A supplication. "Come to bed with us, Mister Holmes."

Holmes stared at her, and then over to fix Watson with wide, frightened eyes. Holmes could stare down the barrel of a revolver or take a riding crop to a fight with a man three times his weight, and never flinch. Set him in a room and tell him to engage in carnal acts, however, and the poor man ceased to function properly. "I…" Holmes' gaze faltered on a series of rapid blinks, perhaps indicative of the way his mind no doubt skipped like a scratched phonograph disk. "…do not know what you wish me to say."

With a frown, Mary tipped her head to one side and asked, "What do you think I am offering?"

Unbenownst to John, that was evidently the exact right thing to ask. When had Mary grown so perceptive of a man whose presence she could once barely stand? "I assure you," Holmes replied faintly, "that I've really no idea what is going on here." His eyes slanted to Watson's, owlish in the dim light of the washroom, and his fingers brushed the places where Watson's lips had touched him as if he doubted the truth of that memory. "I have…you have seen…with your husband…"

Mary moved a step close, her palm still outstretched and upturned, drawing Holmes' attention back to her. "Yes, I have. I've no wish to be cruel, Mister Holmes. I am not offering just one evening; I dare say, it would do you harm if I were. I am offering the closest thing that I can to what you used to have with John: security. People who care that you are accustomed to using yourself too harshly for your own good. People to hear you when you speak into empty rooms." Another step, and Watson marveled that Holmes had ceased to shrink from her proximity the moment she offered her open hand to him. "A reason to pause when the needle calls you. A reason to _pause_ at all."

No expression surfaced on Holmes' face for the longest time following that pronouncement, and Watson wondered what the blankness was meant to conceal. Fear, perhaps confusion. Mistrust. When it finally came, however – when the scruff and pale skin finally condensed to reveal an emotion – the one that it yielded was longing.

Mary swallowed and took a single step closer, her hand trembling now in the pregnant stillness that had moved to fill all of the empty space between them. "You are permitted to want, Mister Holmes." Her fingers flexed to reinforce her offering. Her plea. "You are permitted, even, to need."

What began as an uncertain twitch resolved into something even more ambiguous. Holmes shook his head, but his expression seemed only sadder, somehow, and frightened. It was not that he disbelieved her, only that he could not trust that _anyone_ would offer him such a thing. Watson watched him struggle to respond to her, to find words, and then work his throat when none came. He cast himself separate from them when he shrank back this time. To think that a man as renowned, as brilliant as Sherlock Holmes, could be completely struck down by nothing more than an open hand. He shook his head again, the movement broken like a marionette with half its strings cut. But then he reached forward, fingers shaking, to touch the barest edge of Mary's palm.

Mary turned her hand to grasp at the thin fingers that sought hers, unflinching even as Holmes' knuckles whitened from the force with which he returned her grip.

More a rumble than a valid attempt at speech, Holmes warned, "I am not a nice person."

"Yes, you are," Mary countered, her manner perfect in its levelness. "And one day, perhaps you will tell us why you feel such a desperate need to hide that fact."

Holmes swallowed, averting his face more out of discomfort than anything else, and something perhaps furtive in its origin. "No."

That single word may have been a denial of Mary's estimation of his character, or a refusal to ever reveal the genesis of his own belief in his base nature. Watson, however, reflected that in that moment, for Holmes at least, it was both. And that was also the moment in which Watson finally understood what Mary was doing here – what she meant to do for both Holmes and for her lawful husband. It was not something that an ordinary lady would ever attempt, but Watson knew for a fact that his wife was not ordinary. Why else would Holmes have released Watson to her, if not because he found her extraordinary? And there could be no further doubt that releasing Watson was exactly what Holmes had done. He could have found a way to sour Watson's regard for her, to trick him or manipulate him into staying on at Baker Street. Any number of schemes would have succeeded in that, and yet when the moment had come, Holmes had enacted none of them. He had delivered Watson to the church on his wedding day, and he had stood up beside Watson as best man, to see him away to the hearth and home of another. Because he had believed that Watson would find more happiness with Mary than he could have found as a bachelor with Holmes.

Watson swallowed and leaned forward enough to rest his hand over the softness of the blanket covering Holmes' knee. He was self aware enough to know that he likely did not want to know the answer to the question that he was about to ask, but it needed asking at this point. They had been dancing about the issue for long enough now. "Holmes. Do you love me?"

Without looking up, Holmes blinked a few times as if distracted, and then reluctantly replied, "You are my friend."

"But do you love me?"

Holmes tipped his head sideways, an evasive gesture, and then shrugged. The very fact that he would not, or could not give a straight reply was all the answer that Watson needed. He gave himself away by the simple virtue of his silence. And the shame that colored his cheeks. Holmes was not a man normally given to shame.

Watson nodded once to himself, a confirmation and an intent. The acknowledgement of a soldier who sees the path ahead and determines to follow it, come what may. He gripped the edges of the tub and pushed his way gingerly to his feet, his leg protesting the use of muscles that had cramped and stiffened from sitting on a cold, hard surface for too long a time. Holmes continued to shiver at his feet, his fingers still caught in a bind with Mary's. "Come on then, old boy. You are exhausted, and not yet recovered from this afternoon. We'll see you to sleep."

Indeed, Holmes' habit of neglecting himself while on cases had fully caught up with him. It took the combined strength of Watson and Mary to get him on his feet and out of the tub, where Holmes stood between them, strangely docile after the excitement of the past hour, shaking from cold and overexertion both. As Watson dried him vigorously with the towel that Mary passed to him, he wondered if they had done more damage than good to accost Holmes with such weighty matters while he still suffered from such a state. Holmes seemed to be shutting down, a printing press gone slow and creaky with rust and an accumulation of tiny cracks and stresses. He picked at his lip while studying the floor, having relinquished his grip on Mary's hand, the fingers of which now hung limp and twitching at his side. Watson had to pull his other hand away from his face before he picked his chapped lips bloody in his distraction, and Mary bundled him back into the thick blanket before they led him from the washroom.

Holmes only came back to himself when he realized that they had not herded him downstairs to the guest bedroom he was accustomed to occupying when he stayed with them, but rather to the room at the end of the first floor hallway that Watson shared with Mary. Three steps into the room, Holmes planted his feet and leaned backwards toward the door, thwarted when Mary closed it, cutting off his escape and any doubt that he may have still harbored about their intentions. He craned his neck around to verify with his eyes that the click he had heard was indeed the key turning in the lock, and then watched as Mary held it up so that he had no choice but to track it to where she placed it on a table beside the door. The implication was clear; they were not imprisoning him here, with them. He was free to leave if he chose.

The sharp bob of Holmes' adam's apple betrayed the convulsive manner in which he swallowed, and then he turned from where the key sat, putting his back to it, a tacit permission to proceed.

Mary peeled the blanket from Holmes' shoulders, but no farther; he continued to clutch it about himself, the exposed muscles of his upper arms bunching as he tensed them. She smiled and assured him, "We needn't do anything you are not comfortable with, Mister Holmes. But you are unwell and you should at least lie down. I don't like your color at the moment."

Holmes gave a sharp nod in response but did not move from where he had stationed himself, his body unyielding in its stance, feet set widely apart to assist him in keeping his precarious balance. It was Watson who coaxed him forward, gentle pulls at his arms where they remained covered and folded over his stomach, until they reached the bed. Watson pushed him down, gently, and it was only as he watched Holmes cocoon himself up to the neck once again, furled in on himself like a child and facing away from Watson, that he recalled that he himself remained conspicuously naked.

"Here." Mary held out his dressing gown and Watson gratefully concealed himself in it, tying the sash with a violence that the innocent garment probably did not deserve. He cast Mary a questioning look, but his wife was already removing her own dressing gown, leaving her in nothing but her night clothes. She smiled at Watson as she climbed into bed and curled around Holmes' shrouded body, tucking his head beneath her chin and allowing him to burrow there as if he had entirely forgotten where he was, or why this situation should be a discomfiting one. Watson noted the long and weary breath that Holmes took once he settled, letting his lungs empty on a sigh of such duration that Watson truly wondered how long it had been since anyone, man or woman, had offered him any sort of solace. That such a thing had come not from Watson but from Mary left him feeling shamed in a manner completely different from that which he had felt at intervals all evening since arriving home with Holmes clutched to himself in the foyer.

Watson hesitated, though at this point he was not certain why he should. They had already crossed so many lines, obliterated so many boundaries, that hesitation at this stage made no sense. With a brief look to his wife as if to confirm her permission, he lowered himself to his knees on the bed and carefully arranged himself to press along Holmes' back like spoons in a kitchen drawer. Holmes' only reaction was to blink sleepily and turn his face more deeply into the pillow that all three of them now shared. His limbs went plaint between them, but the release of the tension that he had held himself in merely served to reveal the force with which he continued to tremble, sick exhaustion and an abundance of stress leaking out in eddies and waves which Watson and Mary each absorbed in their turn.

"Shhh." Mary raised a hand to card through the damp tangles of Holmes' freshly washed hair, snagging and straightening as she did so until her fingers moved smoothly from Holmes' temple to the nape of his neck.

Watson's own hand had begun to rub gently back and forth over Holmes' shoulder and bicep, kneading the spent muscles through the bunched layers of the blanket that separated them both from him. He was not aware of any intent to do so, but it seemed the right move since it eased the force of Holmes' shaking until he merely buzzed with it somewhere beneath tactile notice and yet apparent in that way that can be sensed like a dog whistle to human ears, inaudible and yet jarring in its obvious presence.

Mary broke the surprisingly comfortable silence with the gentle murmur of her voice. "Can you not sleep?"

Watson lifted his head to see what she had been staring at all this time: the languid, heavy blinking of a man too exhausted to nod off, eyes red and sightless though they remained open more than not.

"S'fine," Holmes slurred, turning his nose farther into the blankets now clutched in a fist up by his face. He rubbed the cloth over his eyes, perhaps in an attempt to keep them closed.

Mary nodded and traced the shell of his ear, thumbed his temple, brushed errant tufts of hair from his forehead. "What are you thinking about?"

"The man at the station," Holmes mumbled. "With the watch. I need to find him."

Mary cast a confused glance past him to find Watson in the midst of pursing his lips. "Holmes," Watson started, and then stopped.

"He is a murderer," Holmes told them both, as if he had not already had this discussion with Watson no more than an hour ago.

"Please don't do this to yourself," Watson whispered.

Holmes shifted and seemed to pull in on himself though he remained pressed between them. "I cannot help it," he moaned softly, squeezing his eyes shut. "I saw him, Watson. I cannot forget that I saw him."

Mary pulled Holmes' head down to muffle the sudden, exhausted sob that escaped him. "You don't have to forget," she assured him, though her glance to Watson showed that she was not sure what the issue was. She had not been privy to the majority of Holmes' absent ravings. "John, he needs to sleep. He cannot go on like this."

"I can fetch the ether," Watson replied, sotto voce. "Or chloral. That might actually be easier on him."

"And are we to drug him insensate every night?" Mary demanded, suddenly fierce in her protectiveness. "Do you think that your cryptic descriptions of him hides the fact that he does not sleep even when he is well?"

"Mary, do not – "

"He is not paying attention to us any more, husband. Listen to him. He is barely even in this room."

Watson tugged at the mumbling body between them as if he meant to reclaim it for himself. "And what else would you have me do?" he hissed, enraged for reasons not solely connected to her, or even to Holmes, really. "I have tried, Mary, for _years_, I have tried, and the only thing that I have learned by it is that I cannot cure him of himself! I wish by God that I could!"

"Perhaps you should stop trying to cure him, then, and _be there _for him instead!"

They stared at each other, frustration and anger and worry apparent in the harshness of their breathing and the strength of their opposing grips on the afflicted man between them.

"You cannot change him," Mary whispered, her words hard and uneven. "You do not even want to, if you are honest with yourself, any more than I do. It would ruin everything that he is."

Watson swallowed every bitter retort that crowded his tongue for exit, and merely repeated, in desperation this time rather than anger, "What else would you have me do?"

"Anything that he will let you." Mary watched him, wary in a way that she had never been to him before. "He does not need you as a _doctor_, John. That is something that I do not believe you have _ever _understood." She glared for a moment as if to punctuate this assertion, and then she ducked her head to focus on Holmes.

Watson watched for a moment as she shushed him, to no avail; Holmes continued to mutter under his breath, his eyes shut so tightly that the skin crinkled around them. She murmured things like, "Come back, Mister Holmes," and "I know, darling, I know…" Jealousy surged up to lodge in Watson's throat, but it could not compete with the need to sooth his friend by any means. And Mary must have had some idea of what she was doing, because the mumbling grew fainter after several minutes, and Holmes stirred enough to butt his fisted hand, clumped into the bulk of the blanket, against Mary's shoulder.

Before he even knew what he was doing, Watson grasped Holmes by the wrist and gently pried his fingers free so that he could clasp them. Mary looked up at Watson then and offered him a small smile as Holmes flexed his hand to allow Watson's fingers to thread in amongst his own. "That's it, old boy," he murmured, his mouth perilously close to Holmes' exposed ear. "With us, now. Open your eyes for us."

Miraculously, Holmes did, falling completely silent in the process, and he blinked as if confused to find himself still secured between them.

Mary pressed her lips gently to Holmes' brow and murmured an unintelligible comfort into the furrows still apparent on his brow before smoothing them away with her thumb. "There, now. That's better, isn't it?"

Holmes grunted, not really an answer but a response nonetheless, his gaze flickering over her hair and neck, and the hand caught in his field of vision, but not her face. He seemed unable to look at her face, perhaps for fear of making eye contact. Holmes had never been good at making casual eye contact unless he had cocaine in his system; he reserved such things for cases and suspects and objects of his trade, not for the peaceful moments in between. It seemed to arrest his thought processes too much to look someone in the eye for a purpose other than deducing them.

Mary laid her hand against Holmes' face to cup his jaw and raise his chin a bit, once again glancing to Watson as if to be certain that he was alright with this. Then she gently kissed his cheek. Holmes' breath stuttered and his eyes flew wide, finally fixing on her face. She thumbed away the beads of cold sweat that had once again broken out along his hairline, near his ear. If he had been speaking, he would have sputtered, but the silence remained unbroken save for the odd quality of his breathing and the shifting of the sheets as Mary pressed closer to him. She nosed for a moment at his lips, testing, and then she pressed a chaste kiss to his lips. Once. Then again, a bit more firmly.

Holmes went so still that Watson could imagine him dead, save for the fingers that clamped down on Watson's, painful in the strength of their grip. Holmes exhaled as Mary pulled back only far enough to break the contact of their lips, eyes owlish in the dim light of the room, sharing his short, shallow breaths with her more steady exhalations.

Mary broke eye contact first, her gaze shifting to John as Holmes took the release to huddle beneath her line of vision. "John?"

It should have bothered him, Watson thought, to see his wife embrace and kiss another man. He looked down instead, and freed his other hand so that he could draw the blanket down far enough to press his mouth into the crook of Holmes' shoulder where the tendons of his neck stood out in sharp relief. Not a sin, Mary had said. Not a perversion. Simply something seen too little to be accepted by the wider world – something too rare to fit into normal society. He inhaled all of the scents that reminded him of home, that had once been the only thing keeping him sane after the war, when he limped about their shared rooms in a daze, still sick with intermittent fever, his revolver secreted in his pocket because he could never be entirely certain that he wouldn't need it. Or want it. Shared baths and companionship. The truest friend he had ever known.

Holmes shuddered and jerked, then stretched without uncurling, which was unexpected. Watson lipped at the skin in which he had buried his face, then snuck his tongue out to taste it. It was a familiar flavor, if such a thing were possible. He knew that taste though he had never experienced it before, not like this. Second hand through shared bathwater, and once when Holmes had nearly drowned and Watson had been obliged to breathe for him. But never like this. Holmes twitched again, a nonspecific motion, and Watson peered up from under his brows without moving his head to watch Mary capture Holmes' mouth again, this time with clear intent.

Holmes made an odd, choked sound and shifted between them as if he were not sure how to behave – uncertain as to what sorts of reactions were permitted here. Watson tipped his head to brush his mustache against Holmes' skin, and then he rubbed his own cheek against the unshaven scruff of Holmes' jaw. Mary relinquished her own place to Watson without prodding and Watson plunged his tongue past Holmes' lips, taking in the dazed quality of his expression as he did so. Holmes made that choking sound again and Watson realized that he was stifling himself.

Watson snugged himself against Holmes' back, wrapped halfway over him in order to reach his mouth, which meant that he felt it when Mary raised her knee and pressed it between Holmes' thighs through the blanket. Holmes' entire body ticked and Watson held him still when he started to twist away, stealing his breath and all of his smothered sounds at the same time. Their hands remained entwined and Watson pressed their joined fists lower, into the hollow of Holmes' stomach where his ribcage ended. He was too thin again, spare as he had been when Watson had first met him and wondered if he had skipped meals out of forgetfulness, or out of the necessity of never having enough money. Watson knew now that it was something else entirely that led Holmes to eat less than he should, something more sinister in his nature that led him to deny himself the basic necessities of life. The why of it continued to escape him – perhaps always would – and it only made his worry more sharp. His need to protect more prominent. Holmes could not be permitted to destroy himself; Watson would not allow it. And neither, it seemed, would Mary.

Blanket-shrouded thighs finally parted and Mary slid into the space provided, her mouth working lower now, soft nips leaving reddened marks along Holmes' collarbones. A wheezing sort of groan made its way out from between Holmes' lips and Watson's tongue crowded around it, pushed it back. He could feel Holmes swallowing from within the confines of his mouth, tongue working unconsciously against Watson's to move saliva down his throat, and Watson felt a primal sense of ownership at knowing that at least some of the moisture that Holmes swallowed came from Watson's mouth – that some part of Watson was now inside of him, absorbed into Holmes' body like the food that he denied himself. Like nourishment. Watson sucked in a desperate breath through his nose and pressed Holmes into the pillow, raising himself on his lower arm and noting how Holmes seemed helpless to prevent himself from both baring himself to Watson and from curving in against Mary's leg where it pressed between his own.

At some point, Watson had closed his eyes to better hear and feel the body beneath him. He opened them again as Holmes convulsed and whimpered – there was not other word for it. The expression on Holmes' face could have been mistaken for concentration, or consternation, but the way his back arched belied that. Watson sucked a final, brutal kiss into Holmes' upper lip and then raised his head to look down to where Mary bit and suckled at a nipple that she had finally managed to expose from beneath the blanket.

Holmes puffed out several startled breaths and then tipped his head back, throat barred. His lips were red and swollen from Watson's ministrations, shining with saliva. They trembled as he fought to process this new sensation and, evidently, failed, his eyes blinking though they seemed focused on something not in the room. His fingers clenched and loosened around Watson's in rhythm with Mary's sucking, and he jumped with an involuntary gasp at each soft bite. Mary had hitched her hips up over Holmes' by now, her body a graceful curl around, over and through his. Again, it struck Watson that he should be bothered by this, by seeing his wife like this, and yet all he could think was that she was beautiful. _They_ were beautiful. He wished that he could photograph them in that moment so that he would never forget what they looked like.

"…_oh_…" That single exclamation escaped Holmes efforts at silence, drawing Watson's attention back up to his face. He shut his eyes as Watson sought to meet them, not to evade but because he seemed unable to help himself. Watson untangled their hands and Holmes immediately seized a fistful of blanket instead, as if he could not remain unanchored without shattering apart.

"That's it," Watson murmured. "Just feel it." He pressed the knuckle of his index finger against the ridged column of Holmes' throat and traced it down to the seem of his sternum. Mary nipped it in passing and moved up again to occupy Holmes' mouth, cutting off the groan that rumbled in Holmes' chest prior to expulsion. Mary had begun rolling her hips against Holmes, a soft and gradual motion more like the undulation of a ship in calm seas than the proper thrusting of a carnal act. Circles and grinds. Dips and swells. Watson touched her waist and then smoothed his hand over the pert round of her buttock before slipping his hand between their bodies. He pressed hard against the rigid flesh he found there, hot and humid despite the blanket that still covered it.

Holmes jerked and tore his mouth away from Mary's, his pelvis lifting of its own accord. Mary rubbed at his chest and watched his face, soothing him with soft, formless words. It took Watson a moment to realize that Holmes, who had no experience of this sort of thing, had been caught so unaware by the pressure of Watson's hand that he had not been able to stop himself from reaching his completion. He whimpered helplessly a few times, body twitching hard with each aftershock, stomach tense and legs shaking as he gasped his way through it. Watson felt the warmth and dampness soak into the blanket beneath his palm with each twitch of the organ trapped there. For no reason other than fascination, Watson rubbed it a few times, and Holmes curled with a sharp cry, the first unfettered sound that he had allowed himself, before falling limp and panting between them.

"There, now," Mary was saying. "You're alright." She pushed at his shoulder until he flopped the short distance to lay on his back. "Just breathe, love. It's alright…"

"Oh." Holmes seemed incapable of anything more eloquent than that.

In spite of himself, Watson grinned, unguarded in his second-hand enjoyment of Holmes' pleasure. He wrapped his fingers around the softening length beneath the blanket and Holmes shuddered with a heartfelt groan, turning his head away as if to hide his face from them.

"Now, now, Mister Holmes." Mary tipped it back so that they could both see him. "We'll have none of that."

"I ap…pologize," Holmes started, his voice a breathy, wavering thing that Watson had never experienced from him before.

Mary tutted and tapped her finger against the parted seem of his lips. "No need," she told him kindly, once again combing fingers gently through his now sweaty hair.

Watson released Holmes and smoothed his hand over the sharp hip beside it to sooth the residual twitching that the change in sensation produced. He watched Holmes blink a few times, his focus bleary and his mind, to judge by the lassitude of his body, finally quieted. Watson stretched out beside him and arranged him so that he was mostly turned on his side, facing Mary again but leaning back into Watson's warmth. For her part, Mary did something clever with the blanket that served to wipe up the majority of Holmes' mess without uncovering him, and then she folded it so that he would not be wrapped in the wet spot. She never once exposed him more than he already was.

Holmes watched her from beneath heavy lids, now and then licking his lips with a faint, contented hum. It did not surprise Watson that he nodded off not a minute later.

Mary blew out the lamp and settled in on Holmes' other side, her hand migrating to clasp Watson's where it rested on Holmes' chest. Doubtless, there would be awkwardness in the morning, but for now, Holmes was calm and present, and safely sleeping, which was better than they had ever managed before without the use of chemical remedies. Watson himself anticipated some moments of panic, not only from Holmes but from himself as well. But for this moment, Watson was too exhausted to care, and his old wounds ached with the strain of the day.

Mary seemed to perceive the volume of his disturbed thoughts, for she squeezed his hand in reassurance. He returned the gesture and tried not to worry about the risk to which such acts would expose them, should they continue to indulge on this path. The morning would come sooner than any of them wanted, he was sure. Any misgivings he may have, any problems that would arise from the events of this night, could wait that long. For now, all was right and calm, and Watson allowed himself to succumb to sleep as well, his nose pressed to a shoulder that smelled of home, and his wife's fingers threaded through his own.


End file.
